No More Plastic Surgery: Plain Janes Are Back!

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“There’s no doubt that standards of beauty change,” says Pinsky, “but it’s really about shifting priorities.”

It’s not all about money. Yes, fewer Americans can afford expensive surgeries, but the generalized stress of the economic downturn is forcing a larger reevaluation, says Pinsky. Even if people can afford a discount Botox quick fix, they’re more apt to spend the money on a movie or a meal with someone they like.

“My consistent refrain on this economic crisis has been that it might give us a chance to hunker down and take a good look at ourselves and what’s important,” says Pinsky. “People are realizing that nothing is important as the interpersonal experience.”

A good, hard look at our lives, he points out, reveals that celebrities aren’t the models we need. In fact, as we refocus we break the pattern of narcissism that he outlines in his book. Celebrities, he writes, have been a model of self-aggrandizing behavior – one that we imitated by slavishly copying fashion trends and beauty standards dictated by the stars.

“Eventually we’ll go, ‘I can’t be like Paris Hilton. She has too much,’” says Pinsky. “As it becomes clear that you don’t get to have what Paris has, she’s coming down. … These economic times are treacherous for people that are in the public domain.”

We’re abandoning the futility of trying to make our breasts look Playboy-quality or beef up our lips to an Angelina pucker. Expensive self-improvement is the victim in this latest recurrence of the “Lipstick Effect” – the term coined by Estee Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder when lipstick sales jumped after 9/11.

Lauder speculated that women were grabbing an affordable luxury — makeup — as a substitute for a makeover shopping spree. If, as Pinsky suggests, we’re paying more attention to our friends than our favorite fan blogs, a more realistic self-view gives us more reason than ever to work with what we’ve got.

“It’s not that people won’t find the same thing beautiful – they will,” says Pinsky. “But they shift their priorities.”

We’re not abandoning beauty entirely. According to the plastic surgery survey, skin resurfacing, such as facials and spa treatments, hasn’t yet gone the way of the lip job. But while vanity will never disappear, we’re keeping our expectations (and our looks) more realistic.