SINCE returning to Pakistan in 2017, with each passing year, I have noted how folks are beginning to look the same. Nowhere is this more visible than the salon, a refuge for most women, including myself. I’m not talking about everyone having the same Jennifer Aniston haircut — I’m showing my age by referencing something from the late 1990s. I’m talking about what Jia Tolentino wrote in her excellent 2019 New Yorker piece “The Instagram Face” about the new beauty ideal, a “single, cyborgian look”.

Sure magazines airbrushed images of models, a practice which was criticised for setting unrealistic standards, but now, we do it ourselves on our phones. The innumerable filter options allowed us to do so much to our faces except now we want to look like our filtered selves. Young women are willing to surgically alter their faces for what may prove to be a fleeting trend. Some of you may remember the popular surgical procedure called the Brazilian Bottom Lift for which there is no demand now. It’s been replaced by dermal fillers or deep plane facelifts which sheds decades off your face. What’s the harm, you ask, and how is it different to beauty practices that I myself indulge in at the salon? The answer lies in who I do it for and who I........

© Dawn