Trends, dictated by a few and lived through the masses. 2015, was the year of the #KylieJennerLipChallenge, for those who do not know who Kylie is, it is probably because you have been hibernating for the past couple of years. Kylie Jenner is the youngest sister of the Kardashian Family and after living the majority of her childhood on camera for her family TV Show viewers and fans alike started to notice her lips mysteriously increasing in size. Jenner claimed that her personal makeup artist, Mario Dedivanovic was just simply over lining her lips using MAC Cosmetics Spice Pencil and filling her lips in with Velvet Teddy Lipstick, another MAC Cosmetic product and Jenner instantly started a trend, beauty bloggers, YouTube stars and Instagram artists immediately began over lining their lips and making tutorials on ‘How To Get Lips Like Kylie Jenner’. Jenner was the source of millions of likes, comments and views and more importantly, the sales boost of MAC Cosmetics now Best Selling Nude Lipstick. #KylieJennerLipChallenge a more bad than good trend on social media this year where fans of Jenner’s would use household items such as Shot Glasses and Tube’s to increase their lip sizes, this was bought around by another company who wanted to cash in on Jenner’s media attention by creating a plastic product that claimed to enhance lips naturally by just simply sucking on the product for several seconds. This trend had some devastating outcomes with fans being permanently scarred and while Jenner condoned any influence with these products, fans continued to try it. How can one person’s lips cause such media attention you ask? How could people cause themselves harm and discomfort to obtain similar results to Jenner’s? More importantly, how could they not realise that she had Lip Fillers the entire time, something she later confessed to at 17 years old.
The real question here is, why are we influenced so much by celebrities? Why does Pop Culture dictate our everyday lives? Why do we buy those cute Chelsea boots from Topshop because Kate Upton has those exact ones? Our generation is controlled by businesses using celebrities as marketing strategies, take L’Oreal for example, Cheryl Cole model’s for their Hairspray Campaigns, you see her beautiful hair and how well it holds in that 30 second clip on TV but little do you know, Cheryl did not create that look and the hairspray is not the only product keeping that beehive in place but we, the potential clients will buy this product believing we can get hair just like Cheryl.
Back to the question at hand, are celebrities a huge part of why average people get surgery? Are we as a generation influenced by them? In many ways no, have you seen Donatella Versace, she is the poster girl for say NO to surgery but marketing strategies influence us to get surgery because our favourite well known celebrity has it too. The Private Clinic of Harley Street have a page called Celebrities and Cosmetic surgery where the writers talk about well-known celebs and the surgeries they have had which is a great read however, scroll to the bottom of the post and you see ‘For more information on rejuvenation and anti-ageing treatments available at The Private Clinic,visit: http://www.theprivateclinic.co.uk/treatments/anti-ageing’ evidence that using celebrities as marketing points can attract more customers. Other examples of this include surgeons calling themselves ‘Celebrity Plastic Surgeons’ like Dr Nirdosh whose clinic is on Harley Street, London. Dr Nirdosh’s website shows us we can obtain ‘Kate Middleton Cheek Bones’ another example of Celebrity Marketing.
Now, were not saying you’re wrong for wanting surgery but are you doing it for you or because a celebrity did the same? Our goal here is to make our readers question their need for surgery based on the fact Marketing and the power it holds could influence a decision not suited to you.
MAKEUP/HAIR: CHARLEE BAXTER MODEL: SIOBHAN DOYLE PHOTOGRAPHY AND POST PRODUCTION: CHARLEE BAXTER
