Back To Factory Settings: Why Celebs Are Ditching Overdone Plastic Surgery

No one would accuse celebrities of being humble or uninterested in their looks. But despite their legendary vanity and obsession with youth, the tide may be turning on the plastic surgery craze. 

These days it’s a lot more likely that a star brags about removing fillers and implants and going makeup free. For once, reality is winning the war against total phoniness.

Example one: Pamela Anderson, who became famous thanks to her oversized chest and dramatic makeup. These days the “Baywatch” star has been making headlines for appearing on the red carpet without any makeup at all beginning in 2023.

Pamela Anderson has completely ditched wearing makeup and is instead choosing to embrace her natural beauty at aged 57. pic.twitter.com/wanPNORCAG

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) October 12, 2024

“This whole peeling it back was kind of how I just started. I just wanted to remember who I was,” Anderson told Entertainment Tonight in early December. 

“I mean I’ve been playing characters my whole life — I want to play characters in movies, not in my personal life,” she went on. “I just want to be me, so this is an experiment. It’s just something I feel drawn to do — I didn’t even think anyone would notice!”

It’s similar to what the actress told Better Homes & Gardens during an August interview. “That was the beginning of me letting go of the image I had always had of myself. What is this cartoon character that I’d created? OK, that was fun. But I’m not that person anymore.”

Anderson isn’t the only one. Singer Megan Trainor spoke candidly about the possible downsides of cosmetic treatments, even minor ones like filler. She told podcast listeners that doing a simple procedure left her unable to smile.

“I messed up,” she admitted. 

“Someone convinced me with my little lips that if you did a lip flip, you put filler right above your upper lip, that you could have a beautiful flip on your upper lip. And I could have one for the first time in my whole 30 years of living — it was not true,” Trainor continued. 

Meghan Trainor says she can no longer smile after getting Botox:

“To all my fellow girlies out there who are in your 30s out there, hi. I got too much Botox, and I need help… Someone convinced me with my little lips that – if you did a lip flip [and] you put filler right above… pic.twitter.com/TFADjnjtrp

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) November 30, 2024

“I cannot smile anymore,” she said. “Everywhere I go, I cannot smile. My face hurts to smile, to even try.”

She recommended that fans shouldn’t “try everything.”

“Little House on the Prairie” actress Melissa Gilbert also said she had some cosmetic surgery regret, describing the final results as making her look like “the spawn of Satan.”

“I had no facial expression, which is anathema considering what I do for a living,” Gilbert said at the time, adding, “It’s exhausting keeping up that kind of façade. I was very insecure.”

Melissa Gilbert says botched Botox left her looking like the ‘spawn of Satan’ https://t.co/9hYrQam8BH pic.twitter.com/DhugNII5C3

— New York Post (@nypost) November 9, 2023

Plastic surgeons recently discussed the growing trend of patients working to “de-Kardashian” their bodies, as The Daily Wire previously reported. And while they aren’t forgoing cosmetic surgery all together, they are going for subtlety over the exaggerated, Jessica Rabbit look that’s been popular for so long.

“Lifts and even breast reductions are on the rise, along with tummy tucks to make the midsection look more fit,” New York plastic surgeon Darren Smith told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I see a 20 percent increase in women coming in for lifts this year over last,” Lyle Leipziger, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at both North Shore University Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center, said. “And those that want implants only want to go up one bra size.”

Southern California cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Annie Chiu said that social media has spurred “injectable backlash,” adding that “the filler market has been down in ’24.”

“At first, everyone was encouraged to get that very contoured, overfilled Instagram face, but now there is a real fear of looking weird,” Dr. Chiu said.

Former child star Lindsay Lohan has the best example of a recent glow up. Social media went wild when she was promoting her new Netflix holiday film, aptly named “Our Little Secret,” and followers insisted she suddenly look ten years younger. 

An esthetician compared photos of Lohan in a viral TikTok in November, saying, “I need to know absolutely everything that occurred between 2018 to 2024 to have this crazy of a transformation. I’m in the industry and I’m at a loss for words.”

Is this Lindsay Lohan's secret to aging backwards? Star reveals skincare routine amid drastic glow-up https://t.co/5GdgEK5yQg

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) November 22, 2024

Other celebrities including Christina Aguilera and Donatella Versace appear to have opted for more natural looks, which one TikTok user said was the equivalent of returning to “factory settings.” 

She asked, “Who is the magic engineer? Who has the magic wand?”

 “It’s not just undetectable; it’s understated,” Dr. Anthony Rossi, a dermatologist and surgeon who hosts the podcast “Give Good Face: Clean Clinical Science, said of the new trend, per USA Today. “It’s very minimalistic, but with improvements, and so it’s not this over-the-top, in-your-face, big cheeks, frozen face. It’s really more subtle. It’s really nice and refined. I love it. I think New York has been like that for a while and now other areas are catching up with it.”

That may also include getting breast implants removed, something that multiple celebrities including reality stars, models, and actresses including Anderson, Tori Spelling, Chrissy Teigen, and more have been doing in recent years. 

Race car driver Danica Patrick explained her decision with US Weekly in 2022. 

“I had tried for a year to resolve certain health issues and certain things going on that were outside of the norm and outside of what I thought there was a reason for it,” Patrick said at the time.

“Um, and so it wasn’t like I thought I’ll get surgery and tell everyone, and it’ll be the magic fix to things. I had tried so many other things that I really had hoped would’ve been the fix, but it wasn’t. And so when I finally found something after so much searching and for a long year of a lot of testing and a lot of different protocols, it made a difference. … I feel amazing and it just keeps getting better.”

We’re still a long way from seeing celebrities embrace the reality of aging gracefully, but the backlash against over-the-top plastic surgery is at least a step in a more natural-looking direction.