Conducting meetings and catching up with family, friends, and contacts on platforms such as Zoom can be a uniquely confronting – if not downright depressing – experience.
They don’t exactly provide the most flattering of lighting and we tend to sit ourselves in front of devices at angles that, shall we say, hardly flatter the features.
Many’s a time I’ve been distracted from the conversation at hand by staring at my image thinking, aghast, “Is my neck really that saggy, and jaw that jowly? Are my mouth corners really that downturned and eye bags so pronounced? Do I actually have that many crow’s feet? Are the `elevens’ between my eyebrows truly that deep?” The mirror is certainly kinder than Zoom and its ilk – and that’s a big call.
Working from home, being out of work and/or in isolation due to lockdowns has meant over the past near-18 months we have largely lived and worked in a virtual world, with many hours a day spent communicating via devices.
Staring at our own faces for cumulatively hours during virtual meetings and catch-ups has given rise to what has been dubbed The Zoom Boom – a surge in demand for plastic surgery and cosmetic medical procedures to address “Lockdown Face”.
Australians are already among the world’s biggest consumers of cosmetic medical procedures such as anti-wrinkle (ie. Botulinum toxin) and dermal filler injections, laser and other energy-based treatments, thread lifts and non-invasive body contouring for a more youthful-looking, enhanced appearance.
More than 1.6 million of us searched for cosmetic surgery-related topics every month and collectively spent more than $1 billion annually on surgical and non-surgical treatments, surpassing the US by 40 percent per capita.
But that was before Covid struck. Flying in the face of an economic downturn in many industries and businesses, the demand for aesthetic medical treatments has zoomed skywards over the past 12 months.
The Cosmetic Physicians College of Australasia (CPCA); www.cpca.net.au – the leading representative body for medical practitioners practicing non- or minimally-invasive cosmetic medical treatments in Australasia – recently conducted a member survey that showed an unprecedented surge in clinics seeing new patients seeking these procedures in the last 12 months.
According to the survey, there has been a massive 41.5 percent increase in new patients who have never previously had aesthetic treatments.
Of course, this surge will have dramatically slowed – or come to a standstill – during recent lockdowns in various cities and towns where the Delta variant has run rampant. Aesthetic procedures are not considered essential medical treatments. But I predict there will be stampede to clinics when lockdowns have eased.
“While, individually, our College’s members have noticed an increase in new patients requesting non-surgical aesthetic treatments, we had no idea that collectively this figure would be so high,” says CPCA President Dr Michael Molton, Principal Cosmetic Medical Doctor/Senior Medical Officer at Adelaide’s Epiclinic; www.epiclinic.com.au
“I personally have seen new patients facing unemployment who are applying for new jobs and getting back into the workforce, seeking these treatments.
“The great thing is that while these procedures enhance someone’s aesthetic appearance, they also contribute significantly to their psychological wellbeing.
“It’s also wonderful to see the message getting through that these procedures are cosmetic medical procedures and should be performed by trained and experienced health practitioners.”
The survey attributes the top three key drivers as:
- An inability to travel, leading to more disposable income
- More time available due to working from home
- A general dissatisfaction with one’s appearance after staring at it for collective hours on video calls such as Zoom (also known as the Zoom Boom effect)
Other factors include social media influences and a general desire to improve appearance.
The CPCA provides education, training and ethical practice standards for its Fellows and Members, who are required to have relevant training and experience as prerequisites for admission to the College.
Members are required to keep abreast of the most up-to-date, relevant information and latest medical and scientific advances. Overall, the key role of the CPCA is to develop and maintain the highest standards in cosmetic medicine.
“With a level of uncertainty still lingering, whether it be financial or health concerns due to COVID-19 and potential lockdowns, there seems to be an ever-increasing shift towards non-invasive procedures, which are considered lower-risk than invasive surgery,” says Dr Molton.
“These procedures offer a wide array of aesthetic enhancement benefits that are effective, time efficient, with little to no downtime and achieve great results that are almost instantaneous.
“Travel restrictions have also resulted in many people reinvesting this money in themselves. Many of our patients have decided that money spent on self-care is money well spent.
“The inability to travel has meant more time and more funds for patients to invest in treatments – and let’s face it, looking good is synonymous with feeling good.”
Dr Molton adds that while “Lockdown Face” has become a real thing, caution must be exercised by a practitioner to provide a duty of care. He says there’s a fine balance between respecting a patient’s opinion and what is actually the right course of action for them.
“I will regularly hear things like: `I saw my face on Zoom and this that and the other is wrong with it’,” he says.
“I have had to say in some cases `that’s not true what you’re seeing. You don’t need this or that’.
Medical professionals have a duty of care to do – or not do – what is in the patient’s best interests.”
Demand for aesthetic surgery has also zoomed. Melbourne plastic surgeon Dr Chris Moss, for instance, reported earlier this year that inquiries for facelifts had risen by 300 percent at his clinic, while rhinoplasty (nose jobs) had surged by 200 percent.
There’s also been a clamour for plastic surgery such as neck lifts, jawline contouring, eye lifts and breast augmentation.
This so-called “Zoom Boom” is a continuation of a trend that’s been happening for years,” says Ashton Collins, director of UK aesthetic medical clinic Save Face.
“Before it was ‘Selfie Dysmorphia’ (body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health issue in which a person obsesses about one or more perceived defects or flaws in their appearance),” she says.
“I think now it’s less about photos, and more about video calls. You see yourself in a certain way, and you scrutinise that and become obsessed with certain things.”
Dr Jill Owen, a psychologist from The British Psychological Society, warns the version of ourselves we see on our screens can be deceiving and distort reality.
“The angle, lighting and limitations of the camera on many devices can lead to distortions of features – meaning, the image can be unfamiliar to the video caller, and very different from the picture they are used to each time they look in a mirror,” she says.
Dr Owen adds that devices such as smartphones can further alter body image, due to the angles at which we hold them.
Obsessing over our own image can lead to “perceptual distortion”, she says, which occurs when we “highlight a fault, then focus disproportionately on this until it becomes magnified in our perception.”
Says Dr Lara Devgan, a New York plastic and reconstructive surgeon: “There’s something inherently unflattering about a 30-degree, angled-upward, forward-facing camera on a laptop.
“I had one patient, who was previously just happy with Botox and fillers, proceed with a face and neck lift as a result of being on endless streams of Zoom calls. She saw jowls and neck folds she’d never appreciated before quarantine.”
A WHAT’S WHAT OF SOME COSMETIC MEDICAL TREATMENTS
Botulinum toxin is an injectable muscle relaxant, commonly used to reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles on the surface of the skin by relaxing muscles beneath, for instance across the forehead, between the brows or “crows feet” around the eyes.
Dermal fillers are a gel-based treatment injected into the skin. The gel imitates a naturally occurring substance within the body – hyaluronic acid (HA), a sugar molecule that exists naturally in almost all living organisms. Fillers are designed to reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles, contour the face and create volume (eg. lip enhancement areas of the face that have become “deflated” over time). HA gel also acts as a humectant (attracts moisture) and can make the skin look more hydrated and youthful.
Threads (aka thread lift). Instead of removing a patient’s loose facial skin surgically, a cosmetic surgeon places temporary sutures (threads) under the skin to “stitch up” portions of it to produce a subtle but visible “lift” in the face. The threads eventually dissolve, leaving the “lifted” appearance.
Non-invasive body contouring is an umbrella term for fat dissolving and skin-tightening procedures that involve the use of devices that harness various types of energies, such as ultrasound, radiofrequency or cryolipolysis (aka “fat freezing”), to achieve a shapelier, more toned-looking body in multiple sessions. Many people choose these over surgical procedures such as liposuction as they are minimally invasive and have minimal downtime. Optimum results may take several months or more to achieve.
Skin resurfacing involving laser is designed to reduce facial lines and wrinkles and skin irregularities, such age spots, scars, acne scars, sagging skin, uneven skin tone, enlarged oil glands and warts. This technique directs short, concentrated pulsating beams of light at irregular skin. The laser targets the outer layer of skin while simultaneously heating the lower layers in the dermis to promote collagen production. Ideally, new collagen fibers will help produce new skin that is smoother in texture and firmer to the touch.
Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) is a type of light therapy used to minimise or remove age spots, sun damage, freckles, birthmarks, varicose veins, broken blood vessels on the face, rosacea and hair on the face, neck, back, chest, legs, underarms, or bikini line. IPL is similar to a laser treatment. However, a laser focuses just one wavelength of light at the skin, while IPL releases light of many different wavelengths, like a photo flash. It penetrates down to the second layer of the skin (dermis) without harming the top layer (epidermis). Pigment cells absorb the light energy, which is converted into heat. This destroys the unwanted pigment to clear up freckles and other spots. Or it destroys the hair follicle to prevent the hair from growing again.
IF CONSIDERING PLASTIC SURGERY
If your doctor does not have FRACS (Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons) after their name, they are not accredited by the Australian government as a legitimate surgeon.
Use the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’ website’s surgeon finder to double check a doctor’s qualifications: www.surgeons.org/en
IF SEEKING NON-SURGICAL COSMETIC MEDICAL PROCEDURES
To ensure a doctor has attained the highest level of training for non-surgical treatments, look for Cosmetic Physicians College of Australasia (CPCA) fellows, if they are not specialist plastic surgeons.
