Capsule’s Emma has been working from London since early January and there is one jarring thing that she has been noticing that is a stark difference to what we’re used to back home. A hint: it’s known as The Love Island effect, and no, it’s not about having tropical romances.
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My husband is on sabbatical – a thing that I thought people only did in movies – and so, we have been working remotely from London since the beginning of the year. It’s cold, it’s beautiful, there’s a Pret a Manger on every corner and Paddington is everywhere, because of the new movie coming out.
But that’s not the one thing I’m noticing.
Within I would say hours of arriving, I started to notice the sheer amount of work that people were having done to their faces.
Look, I’m almost 40 and with that societal ticking time bomb comes a growing awareness that a lot of people my age and older are adding a little something-something to their skin routines.
But this is different. This is people – no, it’s definitely not just women – walking around looking like the extreme Instagram versions of themselves. And it is, there is no other word for it: jarring.
I have always been a bit naïve when it comes to injectables et al; I worked in magazines, so I was in the thick of it, and it was only when I mentioned to a friend about a colleague’s remarkably smooth, taut, incredibly perfect and beautiful skin, that I saw behind the curtain.
My friend – lovingly – was like, ‘Emma (you idiot), that’s not skincare. She’s getting a LOT of work done.’ But even then, it was so relatively subtle that all it made me initially think was ‘I need to know this woman’s moisturiser choice!!’
Well, there is no mistaking that here. Subtlety appears to have gone out the window. It’s what has been dubbed The Love Island effect: cheeks are doll-like in their plumpness and foreheads are glassy. The lips are huge – they’re literally advertising ‘The London Lip’ on ads down in the Underground, so no, I’m not making this up. The sheer volume – in both frequency and literal thickness – of fake eyelashes is unbelievable. The tans, in mid-winter London, are honeyed and perfect. And by and large, the faces that all this work is sitting on? They’re very, very young.
When did all of this become normal? Capsule’s Alice wrote one of our best-read pieces ‘I Don’t Know What A 40-Year-Old Is Supposed To Look Like’ because it’s such a vague age for celebrity faces. But at the end of last year, two thought pieces came out about the pressure facing 20 & 30-year-olds alike.
Giant Aussie podcast Shameless did a very thought-provoking episode called What Does A Thirty-Something Look Like, where the hosts spoke openly about the pressure they felt to stay looking young – including turning to Botox in their 20s. And The Cut ran a piece by the same title (that’s the internet for you) about how millennials were ageing well, but people in their 20s were turning to injectables to look like their online filtered faces.
In an article about ‘the Love Island effect’, this chilling little stat was mentioned: The Love Island effect is evidenced by the increasing interest in cosmetic treatments when the show is aired. During the 2021 season of Love Island, there was a 49% increase in UK Google searches for lip fillers, searches for liposuction were up 33% and the search term ‘Botox’ was used 82% more times.
And with the rise of AI in our beauty images, you can only imagine that pressure to look not only perfect, but flawless in a literally non-human way, is going to grow. Think about the rave reviews Lindsay Lohan got for her new face – including questioning if she’s had a face lift – even though she is 38 years old! (*screams into void*).
We have written about Botox a lot on Capsule – the joys of getting it and the joys of stopping getting it. And God knows, I think about it often – every time I have a run of bad sleep, the difference between my wonky eye and my ‘good’ eye makes my face look like a Picasso painting (not a compliment!)
But seeing the overtness of it here in London makes me both sad and worried – we’re always slow to global trends, down in NZ, but they inevitably arrive. And from spending over a month in this fair city, I will tell you that two things are coming for us: this colourful scarf (or a knock-off), which I have seen on like every second person, and the big one: very, very obvious facial work.