The Morbid Appeal of "Botched" Plastic Surgery - Cosmetic procedures are on the rise. So is our voyeuristic fascination with how they go wrong.

[Ubiquitous]

Haley Layne, who stars on the British internet documentary series Hooked On
The Look, has spent about half a million dollars on plastic surgery. While
she’s 32 procedures closer to achieving what she considers the “perfect
body,” the 28-year-old needs, by her estimate, at least another 10. “Once you
get to this level, there’s never any stopping,” Layne admitted on the show.
“You have to maintain [this look] for the rest of your life.”

Part of this maintenance has involved 13 breast operations over the past two
years, and resulted in four trips to the emergency room. When Layne nearly
doubled the size of her existing breast implants from 650 cubic centimeters
to 1200 ccs, her body couldn’t handle them, and she needed reconstructive
surgery to repair the damage to her breast tissue. (For context, the average
breast implant size is between 300 and 400 cc.) Still, Layne wasn’t deterred
from trying to increase her cup size.

Layne is practically a caricature of Western standards of beauty, with long
blond hair, bulging J-cup breasts, and a peach-shaped derrière that appears
out of proportion to her petite waist. She is a real-life distortion of the
“slim thick” body type sought by many American women today (an ideal
appropriated from Black and brown body types). In fact, Layne’s physique
serves as an endorsement for some of the fastest-growing plastic surgery
procedures in the country, as well as the most popular: liposuction, breast
augmentation, lip injections, and the now-mainstream Brazilian butt lift
(BBL).

Why, then, has her appearance been subject to ridicule, morbid and
voyeuristic fascination on plastic surgery forums, and, among a devoted group
of fans, erotic observation? To her harshest critics, Layne’s surgical
pursuits seem delusional. Her body is “too plastic,” “cartoonish,” or
“botched” beyond repair. Commenters on social media, some of whom are rabidly
fascinated by plastic surgery extremities and faults, bemoan the loss of her
pre-surgery features, claiming she was “so cute and natural” before she went
“too far.”

Layne is just one of the many not-quite-stars who’ve gained tabloid-level
notoriety for their plastic surgery preoccupations. In the early 2000s,
“makeover” reality television shows like The Swan, Extreme Makeover, and
Addicted to Beauty helped normalize the dystopian concept of a plastic
surgery transformation for regular people while reinforcing Eurocentric
standards of beauty. These shows eventually gave way to media that sought to
divulge the darker realities of these procedures. Perhaps the most culturally
enduring show to date from this genre is Botched, a series that followed two
Beverly Hills surgeons who consult with patients to try and reverse the
damages from their botched procedures. (Layne was briefly featured in its
sixth season.)

Over the course of its seven-season run, Botched developed a cult following,
one driven by our lurid interest in plastic surgery nightmares. A growing
online subculture of plastic surgery patients, enthusiasts, and voyeurs has
thrived on the visual schadenfreude of scrutinizing certain “botched” figures
such as Layne’s.

This mix of revulsion and fascination with the human form has a name: body
horror, a term generally used to describe works of fiction depicting
grotesque images, intended to frighten and reveal social anxieties. The
overwhelming impulse toward pity or fear or even derision — “You paid money
to look like that?” — applies to real-life bodies we gawk at, whether through
a screen or on the streets.

It speaks to how we, the observers, are perhaps more shaken by the pretense
of artificiality than any actual body-modification procedures or the industry
that peddles them. In this way, the botched body becomes a warning, a
reminder of the unspoken standards we are held to. What’s most revealing, and
most similar to when we find ourselves drawn to horror movies, is our
inability to look away.

Sometime over the past two decades, the stigma attached to getting plastic
surgery lessened dramatically. More celebrities opened up about the work
they’ve had done. Influencers began filming their procedures and sharing in-
depth information about their surgeries. And more people started seeking out
work: According to data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 18.4
million cosmetic procedures were performed in the US in 2019, compared to
13.1 million in 2010. Advances in plastic surgery and the popularity of
minimally invasive procedures such as Botox and filler meant it was easier
and more affordable for people to tweak their appearance without needing to
fully go under the knife.

Part of this cosmetic procedure craze, which is attracting young and even
teenage patients, has been attributed to social media — its ability to
amplify certain physical traits and, through fillers and Facetune,
disseminate beauty ideals to the masses. Tweaking one’s face is not only
normalized but also driven by the internet’s accelerating trend cycles. See:
the saturated demand for brow lifts, BBLs, and facial (especially lip)
injections. That has greatly affected our understanding of what’s “normal” or
“natural.”

“I think of it as the Kardashian-ization of our young people,” said Anthony
Youn, a Michigan-based plastic surgeon. “The Kardashians have popularized a
certain facial ideal that many people aspire to have: high cheekbones,
slightly tilted eyes or arched eyebrows, hollow cheeks, plump lips, and a
chiseled jawline.”

What passes for the norm today looks very different from the standards of the
2000s. Desirable traits — and the unnatural, funhouse-mirror versions of them
— are more identifiable and more achievable than ever before, thanks to the
influx of images and information on the internet. Yet there remains a fine
but fluid line that separates normative ideals of beauty (Bella Hadid,
although she’s denied ever having surgery) from apparent artificiality (Haley
Layne), even if both likely poured thousands of dollars into achieving their
given looks.

For many, the second-worst outcome of a procedure, besides death, is one that
is — or appears — botched. It’s a sign of a bad doctor or an illicitly
performed procedure. In some cases, as online viewers have speculated, it’s a
reflection of a person’s self-delusion.

“Botched can refer to surgical complications, in cases where the surgeon
didn’t perform the procedure satisfactorily,” explained Youn. “It’s also used
more subjectively to describe the appearance of a patient. This person might
be happy with the result of their procedure, but others might dislike it and
call it ‘botched’ because they think it’s too much.”

The verb “botch,” which has origins from the Old English word bocchyn,
originally meant “to repair or fix.” Over time, this definition changed to
signal a clumsy repair job, which is closer to how the word is used to refer
to plastic surgery today. The word is frequently tossed around (often in a
derogatory manner) by an online subculture of plastic surgery patients,
enthusiasts, and voyeurs. In some cases, botched patients have shared videos
of their follow-up procedures and recovery on social media to educate or
build an audience after a surgical mishap.

On subreddits like r/BotchedSurgeries, users share and discuss images of a
person’s botched results, typically after they’ve healed from surgery. These
screenshots are gleaned from the social media accounts of plastic surgery
enthusiasts — Layne, influencers, models, regular people — and labeled under
various categories, such as “extreme plastic surgery,” “lip filler
migration,” “too much filler,” “extreme body mods,” and “before and after.”

The fixation on faulty BBLs and overfilled lips can seem frivolous and mean-
spirited; in many ways, it’s a direct contrast to the body positivity
movement that has saturated the internet. Even when it comes to celebrities
and influencers whose job it is to put their bodies on display, observers
obsess over the perception of appearing “natural.” The illusion is shattered
when it’s clear that even the rich and famous can look “botched,” despite all
odds. As a result, viewers are forced to confront the unattainable reality of
hard-earned beauty: that plastic surgery is not a guaranteed solution to our
insecurities. It requires a person to engage in a cycle of constant upkeep
that could transform them from beautiful to uncanny. Layne, at least, is
honest about how she never plans to stop.

The focus on the human body — as a site for disfigurement, transmutation, or
sexual violation — can be traced back at least to the 19th century. The genre
of body horror began with works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and extended
to films like Eyes Without a Face (1960) and The Fly (1986). Scholars have
long speculated about society’s fascination with horror as it relates to the
body in fictional settings. In most modern cases, however, the bodies fixated
on are real, not fake — but we treat them like they are.

Many have claimed that this fear of body modification and disfigurement
reflects our social anxieties: over the advancement of biological science and
Western medicine, the perceived loss of agency over our bodies, algorithm-
influenced beauty standards, or bodies that fall outside societal norms.

In recent decades, the body horror genre has seen more works that spotlight
surgical procedures, specifically cosmetic surgery. The patients in fictional
films like Faceless and The Skin I Live In are typically subject to horrific
violence and pain inflicted upon them against their will by crazed surgeons
or scientists. This kind of “surgical horror,” according to Gothic scholar
Xavier Aldana Reyes, is “the logical conclusion to the postmodern subject’s
fear of advances” in science and technology. The genre tackles questions of
individual agency and vulnerability in the modern world. The body “becomes
the object under attack by tyrannical individuals or, in some cases,
companies or systems of punishment,” wrote Aldana Reyes in his book Body
Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror Film.

“We’re interested in but afraid of the artificial,” Aldana Reyes told me.
“When we talk about horror, the idea of the uncanny tends to come up, like
the phrase ‘uncanny valley.’ It seems like we’re interested in the tipping
point at which something human tips over into the unnatural or the
artificial. To what extent do we lose our sense of self in the process? What
constitutes us, and how much of it is external?”

Some modern fictional works, however, have begun to invert this dynamic by
giving patients a sense of command over their physical alterations instead of
portraying them as tragic freaks. The 2012 film American Mary follows a
medical school dropout who performs extreme body modification surgery on
consenting patients. Rather than conform to the “mad doctor” trope, the
surgeon is depicted as a likable, complex protagonist, while her patients are
given backstories and agency over their surgical procedures.

Reality shows like Botched and Plastic and Proud try to humanize their
patients, but these attempts are often paradoxical. Behind the facade of
cosmetic surgery, these shows hint at a person grappling with his or her own
desires, fears, and mental health, who is worthy of the audience’s compassion
and time. Yet this type of media depends on a base level of voyeurism.
Viewers display varying levels of empathy for those who need surgery (for
reconstructive or gender-affirming purposes) versus those seeking out
cosmetic, and therefore arguably unnecessary, procedures.

Ultimately, this morbid fascination and disdain is just a cover for that same
old set of fears: that people, particularly women, are subject to the harsh
whims of a society that demands they look a certain way (some far more so
than others); that our bodies, despite our efforts, are at their core unruly
and ungovernable; that we’re actually not so different from the people we
gawk at after all.

Popular procedures like breast augmentations, brow and butt lifts, and facial
fillers are marketed as tools for assimilation, for crafting a body and face
to fit a certain standard of beauty. It’s an ideal that devalues anyone who
falls outside the Eurocentric norm, particularly Black and brown women who
are expected to conform to the unattainable.

The real winner here is the plastic surgery industry, which has been touted
as the solution to these anxieties. And the real villain is the very present
danger of actual complications and risks that can afflict patients (remember
Layne’s four emergency room visits?). Still, there is something perhaps a
little transgressive, however intentionally, in the aesthetic of a “botched”
body such as Layne’s. What we care about as a society isn’t the “natural,” it
seems, but what can successfully be perceived as such while checking all the
elusive boxes. With such an impossible standard to live up to, why not run
all the way in the other direction?

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Let's go Brandon!