Pumpkin snickerdoodles, plastic surgery & pretty privilege

Today’s agenda: hot-button topics and hopping on the pumpkin bandwagon.

If you’ve lived in the United States in the last 20 years, you’re familiar with the pumpkin spice craze. The craze began in 2003 with the advent of the famed Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte (or, as it’s lovingly referred to now since we humans love our acronyms, the PSL), and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Another trend I and others have noticed picking up speed is plastic surgery—more specifically, those “small,” non-invasive cosmetic procedures like fillers, botox and sculpting.

“Now, what do these treatments have to do with the pumpkin spice craze and the recipe for today, Cece?” you may ask. I’ll tell you. 

Both pumpkin spice and plastic surgery have been popularized in the public’s pursuit of an identity unattainable for most. It is the identity of someone rich and beautiful. Someone who can afford to drop $5 on a small latte every day and $400+ on Botox every other month. Privilege begets privilege; those who are privileged enough to afford the pretty things and pretty procedures double-dip into the pool of “pretty privilege.” For example, these people have greater access to the influencer space because of their purchased goods, and they go on to profit off of the insecurities of others (read: those poorer than themselves). Let’s get into it.

What is “pretty privilege”?

Have you ever seen someone so beautiful you wanted to be their friend? Be honest: the answer is yes. Don’t be ashamed, it’s in our nature as humans. Biologically, physical beauty denotes better physical health, which sets off an alarm in our brains that “we should mate with this person!” The issue with this arises when the Halo Effect sets in.

In her video, “Pretty privilege isn’t real, you’re just shallow,” Youtuber Salem Tovar defines the Halo Effect as “the perceptions of one quality lead to a biased judgment of other qualities.”

Tovar cites the romanticization of Ted Bundy over the years as an example of this (side note: I’ve never understood the hype surrounding his looks…). Hence why we would want to befriend attractive people—our positive feelings toward their looks transfer to their personality and character. This explains the phenomenon of pretty privilege. 

What is the impact of pretty privilege?

It’s nothing groundbreaking to say the beautiful have it easier in life. Studies have shown that people view more attractive political candidates as more competent, more attractive bosses as better at managing their staff, the list goes on.

You may be familiar with the TikTok trend, “Tell Me You Have Pretty Privilege Without Telling Me You Have Pretty Privilege,” where (mostly) girls list off the handouts they’ve been given because of their looks. Well, it has a less popular inverse trend: “Tell Me The First Time You Realized Other People Thought You Were Ugly," where (mostly) girls list off the demeaning treatment they’ve had to endure because they don’t fit their society’s standard of beauty.

This leads us to another issue: at the moment, the beauty standard is the Kardashians and their patented “Instagram Face.”

The growing popularity of cosmetic procedures

Youtuber Mina Le defines “Instagram face” in her video “the problem with plastic surgery” as a face “represented by a mix of ethnic features, but still distinctly white,” — pumped full of filler and sculpted to the gods.

Tying beauty standards to plastic surgery is problematic, mainly because it allows the upper echelons of society to gatekeep beauty as something only accessible to the very rich or the very lucky poor—oh, and they usually have to be white, but I digress. There’s also the issue that the people getting these procedures often don’t disclose to the public that they’ve had them, so impressionable young people are seeing these altered adult faces and bodies and comparing them to their natural, awkward, pubescent faces and bodies. I predict we’ll see an uptick in mental health problems relating to this in the future.

According to The Aesthetic Society’s “Annual Plastic Surgery Statistics” report, Americans spent approximately $9 billion on cosmetic procedures in 2020. This number is staggering on its own, but compare it to the $8.2 billion Americans spent on cosmetic procedures in 2019, and you’ll see an extreme upwards trend in the number of cosmetic procedures performed. So, yeah, this “beauty” trend doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

Where does this leave us?

I’d like to close with a thought I read in the comments section of Le’s Youtube video, from user Charlotte LaRochelle-Compton:

“There’s just something dystopian about FACIAL FEATURES being considered “trendy” I can’t get over.”

Enjoy the pumpkin snickerdoodles while you ponder the dystopia we’re living in. :)