'My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done'

Read my latest Ask Ugly column.

The next installment of Ask Ugly, my monthly beauty advice column for the Guardian, is here!

Hi Ugly,

My father is falling down a plastic surgery rabbit hole and trying to drag everyone around him down with it. He’s in his late 50s and, in the past year, he got his first cosmetic surgery and made a whole fuss about the results. I personally can’t see any difference whatsoever, but he brags about it constantly to anyone and everyone!

After this “success”, he’s been telling my mom to get Botox and microneedling for her wrinkles and telling me to get a weird, expensive acne laser treatment and urging me to see his cosmetic dermatologist for my acne scars. I feel very uncomfortable with this – I previously did Accutane and a million other things for my acne, which is, cough cough, genetic! – and any suggestion that my mid-50s mother needs to stop ageing.

How do I navigate my father’s maddening descent into plastic surgery culture?

- Sad, Acne-Scarred Daughter

Illustration: Lola Beltran/The Guardian

I understand your dad completely.

When I was 11, I forced layers of sparkly eyeshadow on my four-year-old sister. My friends and I passed soda-flavored Lip Smackers around our middle school classrooms like notes. Upon discovering Urban Decay Big Fatty Mascara in my teens, I told every girl I knew she had to buy a tube (or 10).

Girls are born into beauty culture, which teaches us that appearance is a key measure of our worth. It’s communal! Social! Fun! Feminine beauty ideals are modeled by the dolls we play with. (Hi, Barbie.) The rules are passed down in games and stories. (Remember Pretty Pretty Princess?) Products become portals to friendship and connection. We learn to self-surveil and to surveil others, often subconsciously, as a way to gauge our personal success and help our loved ones succeed, too.

Some of us eventually reckon with this, and realize the urge to embody beauty standards isn’t a harmless hobby so much as a physically, psychologically, and socioeconomically harmful obligation. But that can take time.

Your father, freshly exposed to beauty culture in his 50s, isn’t there yet. He still has the mindset of an adolescent. And he’s far from alone!

The cosmetics industry has been reeling men into its multibillion-dollar empire in recent years. Call it inclusivity: the media hailed singer Joe Jonas’s 2022 endorsement of Xeomin, a Botox alternative, as “genderless self-care”. Call it capitalism: Pharrell, Machine Gun Kelly, Harry Styles and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson all cashed in on the celebrity beauty brand boom by launching their own lines. Call it contagion: an increasingly virtual world is an increasingly visual world, and the pressure to prioritize aesthetics is reaching parents, children and even pets.

Whatever you call it, it’s working.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports that in the US, men’s Botox use increased 5.5% between 2022 and 2023, and the number of men undergoing cosmetic procedures grew 8%. Today, 52% of American men use skincare products – a 68% jump from 2022. Men are breaking their legs to get taller, shaving their teeth to get veneers, and flying to Turkey to get hair plugs. The global men’s cosmetic market is worth $90bn dollars and is projected to grow to $115.3bn by 2028.

“Anecdotally, I’m seeing this [shift] in more than half the dads I know,” says Chris Danton, co-founder of the In Good Co consultancy and author of the newsletter Good Thinking. “It’s a multi-generational phenomenon.”

In an ideal world, cis, straight men’s growing interest in a traditionally female- and queer-focused category might inspire them to question arbitrary gender norms – to free themselves from the trap of toxic masculinity! Alas, that’s not what’s happening.

Instead, men have recast cosmetics as power tools for alphas, reinforcing sexist stereotypes and promoting ageist, classist, oppressive appearance ideals. Beautification has been rebranded as “looksmaxxing” and perfume as “scentmaxxing”. Swallowing skincare supplements is referred to as “biohacking” and anti-ageing as “longevity”. Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever, a new Netflix documentary on the 47-year-old tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s obsession with living forever and looking like a teenager, might give you some insight into your dad’s mental state.

The best insight might come from reflecting on your own childhood experiences, though, since modern men’s beauty culture draws from the same old playbook: ideals are inspired by Marvel action figures. Gamified fitness trackers enforce the rules. Instead of Pretty Pretty Princess, they have brawny, billionaire broligarchs modeling money, power and makeovers.

You say your dad is “dragging everyone around him down” with him. But my guess is, like a kid with a shiny new toy, he thinks he’s sharing.

The rest of my answer includes:

• what happens when fear of mortality meets misogyny

• exactly what this father needs (feminism!!!)

• less idealistic advice from psychologist

  Pooja Lakshmin MD
  (i.e. what to try if your beauty-obsessed father won’t read foundational feminists texts)

• actually useful studies on longevity

• and more!

Click through to the Guardian to read the whole thing (and if you decide to share it with friends or on social media or whatever, please share it via the Guardian link).

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