The infamous socialite and so-called “Catwoman” Jocelyn Wildenstein passed away Tuesday at age 84. A case study in extreme plastic surgery, she was also a canary in the coal mine for our cultural obsession with augmentation.
She should have been a cautionary tale, like Michael Jackson, of the dangers of going too far in the quest for perfection. But now, new generations of influencers and celebrities are spending just as much to have even more procedures in the same distorted pursuit.
Unfortunately for Wildenstein, she was so far ahead of her time in terms of surgical advancements that she ended up looking botched — freakish, many would say — with her permanently swollen face, chunky cheeks, stretched skin and feline-like eyes, speculated to be inspired by her pet lynx.
(Wildly, she told The Sun, “I haven’t had plastic surgery.” But her ex-husband told Vanity Fair: “She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen.”)
It allegedly started shortly after her marriage to art collector Alec Wildenstein ended in 1978, when she reportedly caught him in bed with a 19-year-old model.
Wildenstein had all the money in the world, receiving a $2.5 billion settlement and annual payments of $100 million for 13 years in her divorce settlement. Yet access to top doctors still couldn’t save the once-stunning woman from transforming into a distortion.
Likewise, money and access didn’t keep Michael Jackson from turning himself into a nearly unrecognizable person.
Priscilla Presley has been accused of going overboard with Botox and filler. Sharon Osbourne — who admits she is “on face three and counting” — recently told The Sunday Times in 2022 that a facelift left one eye “different to the other” and rendered her looking “like a f–king Cyclops.”
It’s not just a slippery slope — it’s a hundred-foot cliff drop surrounded by warning signs.
And yet, our culture has ignored all warnings and fallen into a plastic surgery obsession.
There was a 19% increase in cosmetic procedures in the United States between 2019 and 2022. The plastic surgery market hit an eye-watering $56.8 billion nationally in 2023. By 2032, that number is expected to reach $94.5 billion.
Even as celebrities like the Kardashian and Jenner sisters play coy about what work they’ve had done, other women have flocked to doctors and, sometimes, unlicensed hacks, to get copycat looks. The results can be fatal, as when a woman whose OnlyFans fame was based on her resemblance to Kim Kardashian died from cardiac arrest following a plastic surgery procedure.
Some stars, like Megan Fox, admit to going under the knife. And there is a whole industry of YouTubers and social media influencers who make vlog-style videos documenting their breast augmentations, nose jobs and eye lifts — and rake in millions of views from impressionable young people thinking of doing the same.
In truth, celebrities and influencers today are no less addicted to going under the knife than Wildenstein was. They’re just lucky to have inherited plastic surgeons with decades’ more practice and innovation under their belts.
But it’s all a form of dysmorphia. Losing touch with reality in the mirror is much easier than people realize.
Every second, there seems to be another plastic surgery trend pulled out of thin air — and with it a new, obscure insecurity that catches on like wildfire.
Who knew, until the procedure went viral online, what buccal fat removal was? Nobody had even heard of nasolabial folds until TikTok told us they urgently needed to be stuffed with filler.
Increasingly niche and obsessive mini-fixes have captured our cultural psyche, sending women rushing to the plastic surgeon with newly discovered complaints about their faces and bodies.
Most of them won’t end up looking as extreme as Wildenstein, but there’s still a sadness about beautiful young women expunging their unique features and paying for “Instagram faces” that make them indistinguishable from the next augmented influencer.
And with Gen Alpha being obsessed with skincare before they even start middle school, there’s reason to fear for the future — and whether they will internalize the sense that, no matter how much they change themselves, they will never quite be good enough.
