[Karolina's Brain] Oh, look at this new photo of this celebrity! They look so pretty. Damn,
I wish I was that pretty. Why can’t my nose look like that? I look like a potato today.
Wait a minute... That’s their photo from last year. What happened to their nose? Oh my God,
where did the eyelids come from? And they had no upper lip before, where did it come from? Let me
check the comments, someone must have noticed... Yes! A single person noticed! That’s great, that
way other people will know about it and hopefully won’t feel so bad about their own appearance...
*crickets*
[Angry Voices] “It’s called growing up"
“She just lost weight”
“It’s just make up”
“My cousin’s friend’s
nose shape changed drastically when she grew up so it’s not impossible”
“She just lost baby fat on her face”
Ok. Am I ugly, or am I just poor?
You're naturally so beautiful, my darling, you are perfect the way you are
Hi! It seems that my best videos are those motivated by rage, so - here I am
I am done with people trying to convince me that celebrities aren’t capable of lying. Like, baby
As if they were ever models of morality, and I’m tired of celebrities not being transparent with
us and getting away with it because we put them on a pedestal and because we like them.
So today we’re going to dip our toes into the long and complicated history of famous
and powerful people trying to create a perfect image of themselves, cause it's nothing new.
So we know that beauty has long been associated with money, but that’s not always the case.
Most of the time beauty equals youth. So the idea of naturally beautiful young women,
rich or poor, has been long romanticized. Think of basically every single female literary character,
be it classical tragedies, or poetry, or Shakespearean plays, I don't know,
romantic poems... And it also directly translates to art, which has been focusing on young beautiful
women for literally, like thousands of years, like ever since art was a thing. And a lot of
those women were actually portrayed as working class women and not only that,
they often actually were working class women, because those were the only women that wanted to
pose for the artists, cause that was something that was considered uugh- kiind of improper.
So... money doesn’t mean beauty, but can it help
you achieve it? *80s tune plays* Stay tuned. We'll be back after a short break
Um, if I- if I did sponsorships I would put one here, but I don't really do that,
so - follow me on Instagram, I don't know
There’s definitely certain things that wealthy people had access to that the working class people
couldn't even dream of. Whether it’s you know, adjusting your figure or body with the proper
undergarments, or whether it’s being dressed well, or whether it's cosmetic products – even
when their quality was debatable at best, whether it’s better hygiene, or better medicine,
or basically not strai- sorry I have cat fur on my chin - not straining your body with physical work,
and like, not allowing your skin to be accessed by sunlight all the time – the rich definitely
had more time and more means to pay attention to how they look. And it doesn’t mean that
anyone who wasn’t wealthy just didn’t care about their appearance at all – it's just that in most
of the cases they couldn’t improve it anyway, so like why bother (laughs) They wanted to be tidy,
but not necessarily incredibly beautiful, cause like, that was unachievable anyway.
Like if you worked at a Victorian factory you were probably more worried about getting
bread for your eleven children than you were about your front tooth falling out,
you know what I mean. And even though the beauty industry at the time was complete rubbish,
it just didn’t really affect you or concern you in any way if you were poor.
Wealthy people, especially women, on the other hand... Ok, so imagine let’s say,
you're living in 17th century Paris, and you're a wealthy white woman whose whole
life is dependant on whether or not she marries well. But, unluckily for you, you were born
with some very unconventional looks for the era. You just don't fit the beauty standards. So you
were thin, and your skin was tan, and your boobs were small, your lips were too big at the time,
generally speaking you looked like a regular 2021 model, but it’s 1667 and no one cares.
And you try to believe you’re naturally beautiful and that your confidence and charm
will eventually get you a man that you need to secure your future,
and yet you keep comparing yourself with all the other ladies.
So assuming you had means and you had access to the beautifying techniques,
you would most likely give in to peer pressure of it and you would probably attempt at least
a couple of these techniques to improve your chances for a- of a good marriage.
You could use skin products, make up to make your skin look pale, as it was fashionable at the time,
or you could improve your figure by eating well and wearing well fitted undergarments and clothes,
and you could use some additional custom-made padding, and you’d have access to the best
hairstylist out there. And then, wearing all of this, you would hire an extraordinary artist,
someone that's just like really good, because you can afford - and they would paint your portrait,
and they would round your shoulders so they look softer, and they would use a paint
five shades lighter than your actual skin tone so it matches the beauty ideal at the time better,
and they would make your eyes appear bigger and they would make your lips appear smaller,
and then you would send this portrait to your potential fiance. Girl, go get that coin
And later, it would hang in an art gallery,
where the visitors would just stop and say “Wow, that's a beautiful lady”.
Now correct me if I'm wrong but like - tell me that’s not something that’s happening nowadays.
Celebrities get famous, and they are constantly surrounded by people who
are beautiful and are talented and are also their direct competition,
people who had work done and are even more successful afterwards. So after a while,
those celebrities, those newcomers give in to peer pressure and enhance their looks,
both to feel more adequate and to increase their chances of success, to like improve their careers.
And there are only two major differences in this process nowadays that I believe
make it so much more toxic – first of all, unlike 17th century ladies who, I don't know,
plucked their foreheads to comply with the beauty ideals of the time, those enhancements
that celebrities are undergoing nowadays are permanent. And the second difference is,
that unlike 17th century peasants who were never even allowed to the art gallery to see
the beautiful ladies portrayed, we – aka the peasants of today – are constantly bombarded
with images of perfection. Not only that, but we are also forced to believe what we see is true,
it is natural and it is completely achievable, and we’re just the ugly peasants that are supposed to
worship the perfect faces without asking any questions, because that's rude.
And it really struck me that when I saw some before and after photos on instagram,
you know a lot of these are like pure speculation
But it really strikes you after you see a lot of these how-
I don’t really see ugly to beautiful transformations. The before pictures always
just look like someone I might have met someday. Like, you know, sometimes you meet people and you
just go like “Th-they're so pretty. Wow, they’re really pretty”. The before photos look real,
because they were real. They look like someone I have met, I don't know. They had those little
quirks, those asymmetries, they had just those tiny faults that make them real.
And the after pictures always look completely unachievable.
I have never met people that look that good. You know, the symmetry, the right proportions,
it’s all almost uncanny. And I’m not saying it looks fake- It just looks unreal.
And I’m sort of beginning to think that that’s the entertainment’s industry goal right now – to
create a beauty ideal that is so unrealistic that there is no other way to achieve it but
through plastic surgery. So by basically being rich. And it creates this barrier between the
working class people, who will never be able to afford those procedures, and the perfectly
symmetrical and beautiful faces of celebrities that we’re supposed to be obsessed with. It’s
almost like those godlike qualities and features that are completely unattainable for mere mortals.
And the problem here is that back in 17th century,
most wealthy ladies were aware of the beautifying techniques, it was common knowledge.
Whether they used them themselves, or seen their friends use them, or heard about it - they knew
about them. And while anyone else were not necessarily aware of those enhancements,
they were also not surrounded by them. Like, common folk had no contact with the wealthy people
unless they were directly working for them. They were not constantly bombarded by those ideals.
This is why I personally think that people with huge following and impact, and influential people-
It’s crucial that they admitted to having work done. It just affects people too much.
Because we’re just like the 17th century peasants suddenly thrown into the art gallery without any
context or explanation, imagine that. Like, imagine you're a peasant your whole life,
and then you go to an art gallery, you're unaware of the techniques that painters use to portray
those ladies as beautiful as possible. And imagine looking at those paintings and going "Damn.
I'm way uglier than I thought" Like, no one has told them that the paintings are not realistic,
no one has admitted to enhancing the sitter’s eyes, or rounding their shoulders, and smoothing
their skin. So the peasants would leave the art gallery thinking “Damn, those rich people sure
are beautiful. I’ll never look like this”. And that’s exactly what we do, that's what we do!
We are surrounded by perfection, but there is no one there to say like, “Hi! Um- Don’t compare
yourself to this. I didn’t look like this last summer, and you don’t have to either. It was my
personal decision and I can look like that because I can afford this”. Like, why is no one saying
this? It's really not that hard. And when there is someone pointing it out, they are instantly
silenced by the well-meaning fans who just can’t accept the idea of their favorites lying,
or just like not telling the truth, cause it's not always a lie- it's just people not
saying it. Considering how often rich, influential people are exposed as nasty brats, it honestly a
bit silly to believe that they wouldn't lie to us. Like, why not? And honestly at this point,
I don’t know if there’s a single female celebrity that doesn't have a raised brow and a giant eyelid
out of nowhere, and yet I don't hear any of them talk about it. How many of them have talked about
it? Why does nobody talk about it? How hard is it to say "Hey, I just lifted my eyebrow yesterday".
So next time you try to convince yourself that they’ve just “lost weight”, or they just “grew
up”, ask yourself – how many people do you know personally whose facial structures changed
completely during puberty? I'm not saying it's impossible, but like, how many people do you know
that had that happen to them. How many people do you know that suddenly had an
upper lip appear after losing weight? Where did it come from? How many people do you know that had
that happen? Why does it miraculously happen to everyone in Hollywood? How many people do you know
that just naturally take your breath away? Like, they just had a massive glow up and you're like
"Damn, they're so pretty". How many people do you know that look that way? I bet it’s not that many.
And just because some of these changes in famous people are almost unnoticeable,
it doesn’t mean they're not there. It just means they did it very well.
Honestly, for the sake of our mental well-being, it is safer to assume that most famous people,
most celebrities HAVE had work done than it is to assume that most have not. Because when you think
about it, it’s just like the 17th century lady trying to get a good husband. These people are
desperate, they want to be succesful, there is peer pressure involved, there
is a HUGE amount of money involved, there is giant competition, there’s a ton of new young newcomers
coming for your job and threatening those that have been in the industry for like years,
and everyone around you has been doing it. So like - When you think about it, there really
isn’t a single reason why they should NOT have work done, you know? So the only thing that might
complicate it is how the public might react to this – but that is easily solved, you just
don’t tell them and you rely on the benefit of a doubt that they grant you because they're fans.
I’m not sure what the moral of the story is. It’s definitely not, um, “don’t do plastic surgery”,
or like “celebrities bad”. Maybe it’s just “don’t fall for the illusion of natural perfection”,
or “hold famous people accountable”, I don't know, uh- Or maybe it's “remember you’re a peasant,
metaphorically, so don’t compare yourself with that one portrait of a wealthy beautiful lady
that you’ve seen at an art gallery", you know. Either way, I genuinely hope that it
becomes common knowledge that rich people will always be more beautiful than us,
because they always have been. It’s nothing new. What’s new is that us comparing ourselves
to celebrities is sort of like the Victorian factory worker beating herself up over looking
worse and more tired than an aristocratic woman who could buy the factory worker’s whole household
using the money she spent on a single hairpiece and a bottle of a hand cream last week.
Who are we? We’re regular people. What do we want? Honestly, transparency would be a good
beginning. And we can try some decency and honesty next, but that's up to you
Just a disclaimer that like, if you are not a celebrity and you have done plastic surgery,
I don't expect you to go around talking about it cause that's your personal experience. But
if you do have a huge influence on people, especially young people,
and they watch you and they think that's what you look like naturally, um- do something about it.
It's- it's making a mess in people's heads. Stay cool! You're beautiful! Um- bye