“Who is the engineer who reset these ladies?” asks TikTok user @emme_davi, motioning to Lindsay Lohan, 38, and Christina Aguilera, 43, both of whom have gone viral this year for allegedly “reversing the clock.” “Not only are they back to factory settings,” she declares, “they’re on a whole new iOS operating system.” In the same video, Davi wonders what miracle elixir The Substance actress, 62-year-old Demi Moore, may be imbibing and where she can get it. “Will it be like the flat screen TV? When it first came out it was thousands of dollars. Will it get cheaper every year, will gen pop have access to procedures like this or will I have to go to Turkey. I’m 40 years old, the clock is ticking. I wanna be gorgeous like this. I don’t care if it’s fake, I don’t care if it’s unattainable, I wanna go back to factory settings.”
@emme_davi #greenscreen #plasticsurgery #iwantit #womenover40 #christinaaguilera #lindaylohan ♬ original sound – emme_davi
This sentiment has swept the internet at the tail end of 2024 as we have been collectively bewildered by the revitalised appearances of several women who were last Very Famous in their twenties and early thirties. A carousel of celebrities from millennial childhoods has emerged looking polished, chiselled and, allegedly, “ageing in reverse.”
What Has Lindsay Lohan Had Done To Her Face?
Lindsay Lohan is the most captivating and heartwarming transformation among them. An image of her at the Our Little Secret premiere in Paris on November 18th, 2024 has gone viral and is being “before and aftered” against images of LiLo from her 200 7 court appearance era. In these older images, Lohan often looks like she’s wearing last night’s makeup; her skin is dehydrated, and the roots of her naughties bleached blonde hair are showing.
In the “after”, she’s been skillfully contoured, her hair extensions coiffed, her false lashes affixed. And, as a new mum, she’s allegedly living a much quieter existence.
Her admirers are cheering her Hollywood comeback, which has been conflated with her fresh appearance. The decade-defining party girl has raised like Lazarus from Hollywood exile — cheeks sculpted, complexion glowing, hair and makeup perfectly in place. She’s the new wholesome face of Netflix Christmas, and while Our Little Secret is a movie that probably won’t win her an Oscar, it has put her back on the public radar.
The decade-defining party girl has raised like Lazarus from Hollywood exile — cheeks sculpted, complexion glowing, hair and makeup perfectly in place. She’s the new wholesome face of Netflix Christmas, and while Our Little Secret is a movie that probably won’t win her an Oscar, it has put her back on the public radar.
But beneath our happiness for Lohan is the anxiety expressed in Emme Davi’s video. How has she done it and how can we do it? In Demi Moore’s The Substance, an ageing actress drinks a radioactive-looking potion that allows her to live as a youthful version of herself. We seem to have taken no lessons from the movie and instead are obsessed with how we can get our hands on whatever they are having.
TikTok is full of users speculating about “whatever Lindsay Lohan has done to her face”, including suggesting fat transplants, endoscopic facelifts, lip flips, and Sculptra. However, some experts feel these videos are as misleading as Paris Hilton suggesting she’s followed a ten-step skincare routine since she was ten years old and that a needle has never touched her complexion which looks about the same as it did when she was living The Simple Life ten years ago.
“The media like to overstate the amount of work celebs have done because that type of content is rewarded with clicks and attention,” says Dr Naomi McCullum, a cosmetic practitioner and founder and owner of the Manse Clinics. “these buzzwords that media cling to like buccal fat, deep plane facelifts, naming energy based devices — they make treatments sound mythical and go viral on TikTok but there’s no magic in our industry.”
Lohan herself has downplayed any cosmetic procedures in an interview with Allure titled “Lindsay Lohan Thinks It’s Funny The Internet Thinks She’s Ageing In Reverse.”
She credited her appearance to noninvasive laser treatments, radiofrequency devices like the Morpheus 8 and $40 French pharmacy skincare. She said she had “tried” injectables but hadn’t enjoyed them. Her remarks were met with a silent global eye roll.
I am among the members of the media not satisfied with the idea that Lindsay Lohan has made some lifestyle changes and found a solid, affordable skincare routine. I point stubbornly to her before and afters, she looks so different.
@drjb.aesthetics Lindsay Lohan through the years #lindsaylohan #lindsaylohanedit #celebrityface ♬ original sound – Dr Jonny
McCullum concedes that Lohan has possibly had a blepharoplasty– a surgical procedure that removes excess skin from the upper eyelids, giving the eyes a more ‘open’ appearance – some well-placed injectables and plenty of skin treatments.
But McCullum reminds me that our preference for injectables has shifted dramatically over the last few years. Advancements in the last two decades included the discovery that ageing causes volume loss, as well as wrinkles. Practitioners responded to this with injectables, some over-enthusiastically and many celebrities started looking puffy and overfilled. Now, they’ve pared back. Celebrities are looking better because they’re doing less and looking more like themselves.
The reality of why Lindsay Lohan looks the way she does is both less exciting and, sadly, less attainable. McCullum says someone with Lohan’s skin and facial structure would probably benefit from a combination of energy-based skin treatments and a combination of minimal, well-placed injectables. These kinds of treatment plans are more complex, require more maintenance and, over time, are more expensive than loads of injectables or a facelift. As with “quiet luxury”, an approach to dressing that requires people to spend thousands of dollars to look like they’ve made no effort at all, minimally invasive cosmetic treatments require greater time commitment and greater investment.
This is the final component. Believing how celebrities look is the result of remarkable cosmetic innovations allows us to believe we can bridge a gap that has existed for time immemorial: aesthetic privilege. Very simply, most celebrities are born hot. From Christina Aguilera to Lindsay Lohan and Demi Moore, celebrities are usually unusually beautiful by whatever Eurocentric beauty deals of the day are en vogue and rewarded for that by being picked for the Disney channel as children and cast as the pretty teen queen or Hollywood femme fatal in blockbusters.
Before they are photoshopped, stage-lit, or cosmetically perfected, they are more “beautiful” than the average person on their best day. “When treating beautiful faces, often the objective is not to make them worse,” says McCullum. What we perceive as magic is often just genetics plus small tweaks. It’s comforting to believe that we can buy it.
Why Do We Want To Believe Lindsay Lohan Has Had Work Done?
There’s also the reality that we don’t want to see images of celebrities that might suggest they haven’t had as much work, or as effective work, as we’re insistent on saying they have. “People take it very personally,” McCullum explains describing the way we engage with celebrity faces on social media. “We see a wrinkle on a favourite familiar face, and we immediately flick away.” This is a dramatic shift in what we want to see when we look at celebrities. Where previous generations gleefully consumed unretouched paparazzi shots of A-listers with cellulite or sagging skin, today’s audiences want the reassurance that youth and beauty can be maintained forever, if we are committed enough or have enough money.
What started as TikTok creators making surgical expose videos has filtered into mainstream media. McCullum points to a video shared by an injector on Instagram. It’s a clip of a red carpet interview with Demi Moore shared by Page Six. In the video her skin is Bratz-doll smooth and her eyes are neon green, a beauty filter has clearly been applied. The injector cuts to the same footage without the filter that shows Moore with fine lines and natural skin texture. An exceptionally beautiful human woman that apparently nobody wants to look at.
Why would a publication that would have profited ten years ago off unflattering images of Moore go to the effort of touching her up? McCullum creates her own social content and says that users find images of older people “triggering.” “People can’t cope with seeing real faces that have aged. I’ve posted real pics of celebrity faces and it’s very triggering for some people. Maybe they see their mortality in the real pictures and would rather see fantasy.”
So, we’re erasing fine lines from the internet, performing digital surgeries and telling ourselves they are real.
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