The rise of extreme thinness is reshaping the celebrity beauty ideal. However, treatments and simple lifestyle tips can help restore a healthier, more radiant appearance.
We thought we would explore concerning media trends, and explore how the aesthetics industry is transforming to promote radiance and a healthy glow.
For decades, Hollywood has told us what beauty is supposed to look like. The ideal has changed dramatically over the years, from the voluptuous curves of Marilyn Monroe to the athletic physiques of the supermodel era and the ultra-sculpted faces of Instagram. Now, however, another aesthetic is capturing attention. This is extreme thinness.
Prominent collarbones, hollow cheeks, very slim arms and increasingly angular faces are appearing across red carpets, fashion campaigns and social media. The result can be striking, but it also raises an important question. Have we become so obsessed with being thin that we have forgotten that health and radiance are supposed to be a part of beauty?
This does not mean judging individual celebrities or assuming anything about their health from photographs. We cannot know why someone has lost weight, whether medication is involved or what is happening behind the camera. What can be questioned is the cultural ideal being promoted and the growing tendency to equate extreme thinness with attractiveness.
Hollywood’s super-thin era is being fuelled by a combination of celebrity culture, social media, fashion’s recurring fascination with very slender bodies and the extraordinary popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss medications.
Drugs such as semaglutide and tirzepatide have transformed the treatment of obesity and can be important medical tools for appropriate patients. However, their growing cultural association with celebrity weight loss has also helped make rapid and dramatic thinness part of the beauty conversation.
The problem is not the medication itself. The problem is when a medical treatment becomes absorbed into an aesthetic ideal.
Significant weight loss can change the face as well as the body. When subcutaneous fat decreases, facial areas such as the cheeks, temples, under-eyes and lips can lose some of their natural fullness. For some people, the result is a beautifully defined face. For others, it can produce a more hollow or tired appearance.
This has given rise to the much-discussed term ‘Ozempic face’, although facial volume loss can occur after substantial weight loss regardless of how that weight was lost.
This is where aesthetics has an interesting role to play.
For years, cosmetic medicine has been fascinated with subtraction; for example,removing buccal fat, slimming the jaw, reducing body fat and creating increasingly sharp facial contours. Yet the science of facial ageing tells us that volume and softness are not necessarily the enemy.
A youthful face has structure, but it also has fullness.
As we age, facial fat compartments change, skin loses collagen and elastin, and the transitions between different areas of the face can become more pronounced. Excessive volume loss can therefore make someone look older rather than younger.
Skin Boosters
Skin boosters focus less on changing facial shape and more on improving skin hydration and quality. Depending on the product used, they can help create a smoother, fresher and more luminous appearance without creating obvious volume. We suggest women make their goal appearing healthy and radiant, and we found different treatments which can support this goal:
Biostimulatory Treatments
Biostimulatory treatments work with the skin’s own regenerative processes to encourage collagen production and gradually improve firmness and texture. Rather than creating an instantly altered face, the goal can be subtle improvement that develops over time.
Energy-Based Treatments
Energy-based treatments can also contribute to a healthier-looking aesthetic. Radiofrequency, ultrasound and laser technologies can target concerns such as laxity, texture and collagen loss, depending on the device and treatment protocol.
Perhaps what Hollywood needs now is not another body ideal, but a new definition of glamour.. Imagine considering radiance itself as a beauty ideal?
Beauty should never require us to look unwell, and this is where the aesthetics industry has an opportunity to lead rather than follow. Instead of endlessly chasing the sharpest jawline or smallest body, practitioners can help patients understand facial balance, skin health and proportion.
Treatments used to restore hydration, support collagen, improve texture and replace carefully selected areas of lost volume are trending for the very reason that many women are choosing to glow up, rather than shrink away.
Healthy-looking skin reflects light differently. Hydration creates softness. Good skin quality gives the face vitality. A rested expression can transform someone’s appearance more dramatically than another millimetre of cheekbone definition.
The beauty industry has spent decades telling women that there’s always something to remove, shrink, tighten or correct, however, this next generation of aesthetics is telling a different story. This is that looking well is beautiful.
As film producer Robert Urich said: “Beauty is health made visible.”
