Is Kylie Jenner’s surgery revelation a setback for beauty standards?

Cosmetic surgery has, despite its obvious prevalence, long been taboo among the rich and famous. The few stars who do publicly discuss procedures are usually bowing to intense speculation or pressure to account for changes in their appearance. Even then, celebrities often share less invasive procedures (Ariana Grande admitting that she previously had lip fillers and Botox), offer medical justification (Zac Efron saying his newly chiseled features were necessitated by a jaw injury) or caveat their decision with regret (Bella Hadid telling Vogue she wished she had “kept the nose of my ancestors”). So, when “Keeping up with the Kardashians” star Kylie Jenner detailed her breast augmentation on TikTok this week, it was not just the specificity that surprised fans — it was the jubilant tone and casual, almost offhand manner with which she did it. Responding to a direct request from content creator Rachel Leary (“please can you just tell me/us/anyone that’s interested, what it is you asked for when you had your boobs done?” Leary had implored in a video), Jenner unexpectedly replied with the implants’ exact size, type and placement, as well as the Beverly Hills surgeon responsible. “445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!!!! silicone!!! garth fisher!!! hope this helps lol,” she commentedwrote in a comment, which has since been deleted. In some quarters, Jenner’s frankness was celebrated as the act of a “girl’s girl” (which is, incidentally, the name that her multi-million-dollar company, Kylie Cosmetics, gave to a shade of lip plumper). “The people’s princess for real,” read one reply on TikTok. “This is why she’s for the girls,” wrote another user. The beauty mogul was also praised by several fashion publications for her apparent openness. Harper’s Bazaar heralded a “new era of plastic surgery transparency,” with the magazine’s beauty director Jenna Rosenstein contending that celebrity secrecy is “gatekeeping the names of reputable, trustworthy plastic surgeons.” Jenner follows in the footsteps of her own mother, Kris, whose representative last month reportedly took the unusual step of confirming that the star’s much-hyped facial transformation (where she appeared to reverse age by decades) was the work of plastic surgeon Dr. Steven Levine. Various other stars have, in this age of bare-all social media, gone public about not only what they’ve had done, but who carried it out — from Kelly Ripa shouting out her dermatologist (while getting Botox injections) to Amy Schumer publicly thanking the doctor who performed liposuction following her pregnancy. In 2021, fashion designer Marc Jacobs documented his facelift recovery, complete with blood-stained post-op selfies, on Instagram. For better or worse, Jenner’s frank revelation further chips away at the surgery taboo. But some critics see her comment as an overly flippant endorsement of an invasive procedure that can lead to illness or infection and has been linked to BIA-ALCL, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a cancer of the immune system). Breast augmentations are on the rise in the US: The country’s surgeons carried out over 300,000 of the procedures in 2023, up from 212,500 in 2000, according to the latest data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. But so, too, are breast implant removals, which jumped 9% in 2023 alone. Indeed, Jenner has previously expressed regret about getting implants. “I had beautiful breasts. Just gorgeous. Perfect size, perfect everything,” she said on a 2023 episode of “The Kardashians,” recounting the breast augmentation she underwent before the birth of her daughter Stormi in 2018. “And I just wish, obviously, I never got them done to begin with.” According to Elise Hu, author of “Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital,” Jenner’s recent admission reflects “how body modification has become normalized.” “Being open about body modification makes total sense to me in this day and age, because I understand it as part of a larger culture in which good looks lead to social and economic capital, and ‘working hard’ means working hard to change your appearance to whatever fits the conventional norm,” said Hu, a former NPR bureau chief in South Korea (where an estimated one-fifth of women have undergone cosmetic surgery), over email. Jenner’s transparency may nonetheless serve to reinforce unrealistic — or for many women, unaffordable — beauty standards, Hu added: “Beauty imperatives aren’t victimless. They teach us to internalize our external appearance as our worth, and in hyper capitalism, offering specific doctors to see or amounts of silicone to buy (and) situate our looks as a matter of choice and resources — that if you have enough money, you can buy an external look that we’ve (wrongly) equated to worthiness.” “It also problematizes the bodies whose boobs aren’t just right or don’t ‘fit’ one way or the other,” Hu added. “Kylie offering a ‘how to’ for her breast augmentation is part of the way visual and beauty industries create a market for ‘solving’ whatever they’ve problematized about our bodies.”