Originally published at: What the bucc is it with people having their cheek fat removed surgically? | Boing Boing
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Before:
After:
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It’s so dumb! These women are going to be sorry when they hit mid-40s and have skeletal faces.
Source: am 50 and still have my chubby chipmunk cheeks
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Um, women are told over and over and over and over and over again that our value is in our looks and in our reproductive capacity by this society. And women who make a living in professions that demand that they be even MORE attractive by whatever means or else they are unable to get work are under a much heavier amount of pressure to look good - because their livelihood depends on it.
But yeah, must just be stupid wimmins… /s
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Whatever the TikTok says I guess.
Seriously, this is really stupid. The surgery that is.
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It’s a good thing no men have cosmetic surgery.
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That’s one terrible hair job.
Edit:
No pics of the penile enhancement surgeries, please!
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They haven’t done the dreaded doll hair transplants since the late 70’s?
No modern one should look like that.
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The photo of the dude’s scalp is undated so who knows when the procedure was done.
I had an uncle who had similarly awful hair plug surgery on his receding hairline at some point in the 80s, by the mid-90s his hairline had continued its retreat apace so he was left with a few rows of little furry soldiers trying to hold the battle lines in a war that had been long since lost.
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I’ve known several trans women who have had them over the last twenty years. And a few guys.
Their results were good. And they weren’t likely to lose more hair. (The women)
Guys who have them these days take finesteride or dutasteride to maintain their investment. Minoxidil too. Not bad for lil man prostate either.
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Hair transplants are definitely one of those technologies where the early adopters proved to be useful guinea pigs as the procedure was improved for later generations.
I’ve got more hair than I expected to have by this point in my life given what my father and grandfathers looked like at my age but I know baldness is coming for me. I just wish it would face me head on instead of pulling a sneak attack from the rear.
Still, I can’t see myself doing hair transplants any more than I can see myself doing full-body waxing treatments. I was lucky enough to be born into a body I can identify with, so if this is what testosterone has planned for me I’m just going to own it with as much dignity as I can muster.
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Totally. The pic I posted above was from an article about how they don’t do “hair plugs” anymore. Sounds like it was phased out towards the beginning of this century in favor of more modern methods, so the pic is from sometime pre-2000 I’d guess.
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I’m just glad that this dude proved to the world that baldness is undeniably sexy.
People are welcome to pursue whatever cosmetic procedures make them happy but a lot of these folks seem to suffer from insecurities that are based on a false understanding of what potential partners actually care about. A very bald friend of mine dated a hair transplant technician for a long time and she didn’t give a damn that he was bald. Her work was just about the paycheck, not about making men sexier in her eyes.
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As @Mindysan33 pointed out, a lot of this isn’t even related to partners - potential or otherwise. The increasing emphasis on youthfulness over maturity is a problem for people in all kinds of careers. We see more media coverage of celebrities, but the pressure to look younger in order to find employment (or keep an existing job) seems to only come up in articles about discrimination.
There’s an old corporate downsizing “joke” about replacing every forty with two twenties. Looks like that’s the age when federal protection begins, too. Coincidence? 
On top of all this, for members of marginalized groups, the “standard” of attractiveness might be one they can never meet (or choose not to adopt). That could lead to unequal treatment in educational, legal, and healthcare systems, just to name a few. Efforts to make that type of discrimination illegal haven’t been entirely successful:
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Not disagreeing with that, but going back to the specific procedure described in this post, does anyone really think that removing buccal fat makes a person’s face look more youthful? It’s commonly known as “baby fat” after all.
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It isn’t about looking young realistically, it’s about a beauty STANDARD set by society (primarily men) and enforced by industries LIKE Hollywood. In this case, the women in question who are actors feel the need to replicate that standard to keep EMPLOYED. Other young women who are not actors pick that up because once again, they’ve been told over and over and over and over again BY OUR SOCIETY that their worth is tied to their looks and reproductive capacity. This is not a new problem, as young women have been struggling with body image through out the media age. It’s very hard to see past it, especially when you’re young and impressionable, and growing up, at a time when you put more emphasis on what your friends think.
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Would you say that part of the “standard” is trying to stand out or do something new? I have been thinking about some beauty trends and this particular one. Currently, there is not a beauty standard for this sunken cheek look. Yes, some people have it naturally, but I wouldn’t say it is a “standard” look yet. It seems very novel and a bit weird/off putting to some people.
But new looks are adopted by Hollywood and modeling media first because standing out and being more interesting than the other options is seen as a plus.
I think back to when the bee stun lip look first started. I recall a lot of people thinking it looked silly. But it did look good on some people, and some people just naturally had fuller lips, and slowly it went from “A look that makes one stand out” to “A look people want to emulate”, becoming the standard.
So is the constant strive for novelty and to stand out part of the standard?
One other side comment:
This sunken cheek look reminds me of some comic art in the 90s, though it would be used more on men and more often women villains. I remember opening my jaw and sucking in my cheeks a little to use myself as a reference when drawing.
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