The Facebook facelift

Maintaining an image on Facebook and other social media sites has reached a new level of significance, complication, and expense in India. The desire to look good to others online has spawned a new trend—the Facebook facelift.

Facebook users in India are increasingly getting chin augmentations, nose jobs, and lip surgeries to look better on social media, according to an article and video at Mashable.com. Some surgeries remove scars and other imperfections. One chin job is specifically designed to make users look more confident from the normal camera angle.

In the United States, many keep their Facebook profiles up to date and carefully constructed to attract potential employers. In India, however, one of the main impetuses for a beautiful profile picture is to attract a partner.

“If you don’t look good on Facebook, then how will you make contacts?" said one Facebook user in the video. “I got laser surgery and … I’m getting a lot of marriage proposals since the stitch marks were fixed.”

The video also explains why doctoring a picture on Photoshop isn’t good enough—after all, users may have to meet potential “contacts” in real life.

In the video, Dr. Anip Dhir said he only expects the trend to continue growing. The surgeries can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000 and are generally sought by social media users in their 20s and 30s. They are not usually full facelifts, just minor corrections.

“The country that invented the first rhinoplasty in the world, the nose job, or the country which started the piercing of ears and noses?” Dhir said. “We are very much accepting of looking good through so-called artificial means.”