The “It Girl” Identity Crisis in The Age of Rhinoplasty and Social Media

Photo courtesy of Mina Rad via Unsplash (the Unsplash License)

In Amy Francombe’s Vogue article about the making of an “It Girl”, she defines the beguiling character of the “it girl” as an aesthetic more than a person: “She is an aesthetic, a cultural moment, a business distilled into human form. She embodies the zeitgeist of her era, serving as a lens through which her generation perceives and defines itself while always standing apart from it.” What struck me as poignant was how the aesthetic began to overpower the individual within young women, particularly on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It’s now common for aesthetics to overlap and for pictures to look the same, especially when so many of us pose the same way: think duck pout, or winking while biting your finger.

I started noticing that on every second swipe through my feed, I encountered the same type of content—and the same face over and over again: that sunkissed, natural look with glowy skin and overlined lips. The “clean girl” look,  an effortless beauty that makes anybody look twice when walking down the street. 

As someone who doesn’t enjoy the feeling of having loads of makeup on my skin, I was a fan. I thought it looked good on everyone. Then I encountered a TikTok video of a girl saying she was born to do a ‘cut-crease’ but is forced to do clean-girl makeup instead. The comment section was full of people agreeing with her, saying they related deeply and missed applying heavier makeup. Even though this was posited as a lighthearted joke, it became apparent that some people were doing clean-girl makeup simply because it was popular– not because they enjoyed it. 

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with following trends. But, if we keep looking to others for instructions on how to dress and look, it will become harder and harder  to distinguish our own style, likes, and dislikes from the monoculture. How far can we follow beauty trends before we realise we’ve stopped thinking for ourselves and hollowed out our identity to acquiesce to whatever is making headlines and gaining views on social media?

The topic of identity crisis became even more prominent as I started noticing how far people are willing to go to alter their appearance. While watching reruns of Friends, I made a flippant comment to my friend,why don’t men dress like this anymore, which naturally led us to start googling  celebrities from the 90s One of the most prominently featured entries was Jennifer Grey’s “nose job from hell”. 

Grey, who was famously known for her role as Baby in Dirty Dancing (1987), underwent two rhinoplasty procedures in the early 1990s that drastically altered her appearance, making her unrecognisable to the public. This not only impacted her career but also damaged her mental and emotional relationship with herself. In an interview with The New York Times, Grey said, “Overnight, I lost my identity and my career.”

According to a Cosmopolitan article by Charlotte Bitmead, published in August 2024, there was a 75% spike in demand for rhinoplasty among clients under 30 reported in 2023. The “nose job renaissance,” she called it. The “Madison Beer,”or “ Cindy Kimberly” —  are nose references used so often, that plastic surgeon Sami Moubayed named a rhinoplasty method after her in his clinic — a ski-slope ridge with a button tip became the aspirational nose for many young women. 

In the article, Bitmead wrote about two women, Rachel and Isabella, who finally got the nose job they had been dreaming about for years, but later regretted it when they could no longer recognise themselves in the mirror. Isabella went from saying she wanted her nose gone to saying, “Sometimes I look in the mirror, and I don’t recognise myself,” six years after the procedure. Even Dr Sandra Lee, a cosmetic surgeon and dermatologist, warns against the damage these kinds of unrealistic beauty standards can cause: “This constant exposure to surgically enhanced photos can contribute to unrealistic beauty standards, lower self-esteem and body dysmorphia.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with getting work done. Everyone has the right to do whatever they please with their face and body. The harm comes when cosmetic procedures are culturally normalised, but their disclosure is stigmatised. This creates a brutal and damaging precedent for young women who compare themselves to a “natural beauty” that is not actually natural. This is not to say there is a moral panic about plastic surgery, but rather a concern about what happens when selfhood becomes a response to trends rather than intuition. What happens when young women alter their bodies and faces in line with trends that are designed to change and evolve? 

Makeup, styling, and specific poses are one thing, but a cosmetic procedure is not something that can be easily undone like a swipe of a cotton pad over our overlined lips. How can anyone form a stable identity when an algorithm updates our ideal appearance? If everyone looks more or less the same, what will begin to gain attention over time are people who look different and more “unique.” Then, many people who have had work done to fit a certain aesthetic may want to change their appearance once again.

Everyone wants to be perceived as an “it-girl” with a magnetic aura and effortless beauty. But the focus on it-girl status is more about a template, a mood board of taste and curation, than personality. The fashion, poses, and makeup all signal membership in a desirable culture. Again, there is nothing wrong with following these trends if they resonate with what we actually like and feel good about. Mindlessly following them, however, just to be perceived as a specific type of girl, leads to a loss of idiosyncrasy and an increase in interchangeable identities. 

As Bitmead says, “The world would look duller if we were all interchangeable.” If we continue chasing a moving finish line, we risk losing our individuality along the way. Trends will always change, but our sense of self should not have to change with them. So, if you find yourself not enjoying clean-girl makeup and wanting a fuller look instead, a trend should not stop you from doing exactly that. All the mental real estate devoted to looking more like someone else would be better spent listening to our bodies and making intuitive choices that actually feel right for us.

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Edited by Hania Ahmed, Creative Editor