From left: Pamela Anderson during her Baywatch years; Kate Moss stars in Calvin Klein’s Obsession ads, circa 1993; Eva Herzigova as the Guess girl in 1992.
By the turn of the millennium, the paparazzi culture that had followed celebrities on the red carpet, at parties, and on every Starbucks run was creating a new camera-ready concept of beauty. False lashes were back for stars and civilians alike. Lines and furrows were targeted with Botox, fillers, and even fat cells extracted from the rear end and injected right into the face until the skin was stretched smooth, plump, and poreless—like a balloon. The body had to be defined, muscled, long, and lean. “Bootylicious” became a word. Everyone suddenly wanted abs. Trainers wielded increasing power. If there was any fat left, new machines claimed to cryogenically freeze it away. Nails were shaped into “squovals,” and men, women, and children all got mani-pedis. Spray tans basted people a rich shade of reality-TV mahogany. Hair was made stick-straight with Japanese, Brazilian, and keratin treatments that promised to last for months—or with the help of extensions. But only on the head. Everything else—everything—was threaded, waxed, or lasered off. A notorious Gucci ad featuring a model pulling down her briefs to reveal a patch shaped into the brand’s capital-G logo was startling for a moment—until waxing accelerated from the “landing strip” to the take-it-all-off “sphinx,” and the sight of any pubic hair at all came to seem quaint and retro. “My entire body is hairless,” Kim Kardashian announced. The goal, in the end, was to look as if you’d been completely Photoshopped, from head to toe.
“We’re more and more sensitive to what can be seen,” says Nancy Etcoff, a Harvard professor, evolutionary psychologist, and the author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty. “Because of the camera, you can see everything, you can look at it pixel by pixel, it’s all over your iPhone, and you can scrutinize and see things that really weren’t that apparent to the naked eye. That’s how I think people are starting to see themselves, as if they’re in these big magnifying mirrors, and all these tiny flaws look just much more obvious.”
In Brave New World, the society is staggered by the return of a woman who has been lost for decades, out of reach of the antiaging prescriptions that keep everyone preternaturally young:
“Oh, look, look!” They spoke in low, scared voices. “Whatever is the matter with her? Why is she so fat?” They had never seen a face like hers before—had never seen a face that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had ceased to be slim and upright. All these moribund sexagenarians had the appearance of childish girls.
