From a pandemic to plastic surgery: how Covid changed the way
we see our faces
Level 3: Advanced
Ashley Abramson
3 October, 2021
1 Jane, a 40-year-old mental health professional
from Cork, Ireland, never worried too much
about how she looked. But when her job
went fully virtual, she found herself dreading
Microsoft Teams meetings. Her face looked
rounder, her nose looked bigger and her top
lip looked thinner than she’d ever noticed in
the mirror.
2 “I’ve always thought I was attractive, and
people would always compliment my looks in
person,” she says. “But on video, nobody was
saying how nice it was to see my pretty face.”
3 In June, 2021, Jane took matters into her own
hands – or rather, her lips – and got her pucker
plumped with filler. She was so pleased with
the results, she plans to repeat the process
every year.
4 As the pandemic corralled the masses into video
conferences throughout 2020, researchers
noticed a phenomenon they dubbed “Zoom
dysmorphia”. After months of remote meetings
and social gatherings – and seeing their own
faces on screen – more and more people
became fixated on perceived physical flaws.
5 Shadi Kourosh, a Massachusetts
dermatologist, coined the term after her clinic
reopened for in-person appointments in
summer, 2020, when she noticed a huge uptick
in consultations for cosmetic procedures such
as Botox, injectable fillers, laser resurfacing
and chemical peels. She co-authored a
study on the trend, which was published in
November, 2020.
6 “With all the other concerns we had at hand, it
was surprising to me how anxious people were
about their appearance,” Kourosh says.
7 Perhaps even more surprising: Kourosh
says that now, with the return to in-person
interaction, consultation requests for cosmetic
procedures aren’t slowing down.
8 In a follow-up study published in the International
Journal of Women’s Dermatology, Kourosh
and her colleagues found that 71% of surveyed
individuals were anxious about going back to
in-person events, and three in ten had plans
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to invest in their looks because of it. While
these figures may not be solely attributable
to Zoom, it’s clear that the age of video
conferencing opened up a Pandora’s box of
physical insecurity.
9 For some, video conferencing exacerbated
existing body dysmorphia. Sam, a 28-year-old
data analyst from Toronto, says he’s experienced
intrusive thoughts about his body since his
mid-20s, when he started to fixate on perceived
flaws about single facial features. “I began
constantly stopping at mirrors or reflective
surfaces to confirm whether the facial feature
actually aligned with my mental image of it,” he
says. On Microsoft Teams, he found himself
“mirror checking” all day.
10 Tweaking his webcam angle to hide
non-existent imperfections didn’t help, and
Teams doesn’t allow users to hide self-view.
Sam tried therapy for his body dysmorphia, but
ultimately, he decided on a nose job. “I was
pleased with the results for a few months but
later, the dysmorphia re-emerged, and I found
a new flaw in the same facial feature,” he says.
“I’m now on the waitlist for a therapist with body
dysmorphic disorder expertise.”
11 Distressed by the way he looked in Zoom
meetings, Chad Teixeira, a 25-year-old
entrepreneur from London, booked himself
plastic surgery in Turkey on a whim in March.
The ten-hour operation, which included
liposuction and a tummy tuck, led to a near
90lb weight loss. But Teixeira also lost a
dangerous amount of blood during the
operation, and he’s had to have two blood
transfusions since.
12 While Teixeira says he feels more confident
in calls with colleagues and clients – and his
mental health has improved due to his weight
loss – he says he’d do things differently if he
had the chance. “I don’t think I would have
done something so drastic on a whim if I
hadn’t been looking at myself all the time,” he
says. “Zoom drove me to risk my life for the
perfect body.”
13 Returning to in-person events feels like a
breath of fresh air for Teixeira. But it hasn’t
tempered his desire for cosmetic tweaks. He
has plans to pursue more liposuction and a
“fake six-pack” next.
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 From a pandemic to plastic surgery: how Covid changed the way
we see our faces
Level 3: Advanced
14 Jane, on the other hand, has mixed feelings.
Her job will be online for the foreseeable
future, and because she feels less attractive
on screen than in real life, she’s considering
a rhinoplasty to improve her confidence.
But resolving her anxiety about her physical
appearance sparks its own kind of insecurity,
she says.
15 “It feels juvenile as a 40-year-old woman to
think about my looks like a teenager because
there are bigger problems in the world.”
© Guardian News and Media 2021
First published in The Guardian, 03/10/2021

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