It all began in 2005. I desperately wanted Sophia Bush’s nose and cursed my own flat and overly curved one. I’d quote Clueless in the playground on my lunch break (‘My plastic surgeon doesn’t want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose’) and the tabloids were constantly speculating about which celebrities had, or hadn’t, had nose jobs.
From the ages of 10 to 16, to me, a nose job was the ultimate status symbol. But the surgery looked terrifying and it was way beyond anything I could save for with my pocket money. Fast forward to my 20s and I’d left my nose insecurities behind, and so, it seemed, had the rest of society.
Instead, ‘ ’ had taken over. Why go under the knife when you can get filler injected to straighten out your nose in your lunch break for a fraction of the price? But recently, working as a beauty journalist, I’ve noticed that there’s been a nose-job renaissance. First, I was at a work event and overheard two influencers discussing their ‘nose folders’.
They scrolled through videos, debating which facial features reigned supreme. And it wasn’t just them: according to , cosmetic procedures grew in popularity by 102% in 2022 compared with the previous year, with rhinoplasties leading in popularity with a 72% increase. As for the reason behind that increase? It could be attributed, in part, to social media.
When I first started researching for this feature, #rhinoplasty and #nosejob both had over 5bn views each on TikTok. Sixt.