I have been thinking about the whole argument around aesthetic medicine and aesthetic practitioners that has been going on recently, and I think there is another part of the conversation that we are not really talking about.
Why do people actually want to change their appearance?
I mean, why do we look at ourselves and decide that something needs to be different?
It sounds like a simple question, but it really isn’t.
People have always wanted to change the way they look. It is not something that started with Instagram or TikTok. People have always cared about beauty, how young they look, how their bodies look and how other people see them.
We change our hair. We lose weight. We wear makeup. We straighten our teeth. We use creams. We dress differently. Some people have surgery. None of this is particularly new.
But what is different now is the amount of pressure and comparison that people are exposed to.
You can open your phone and within a few minutes you have seen hundreds of people with perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect bodies, perfect faces. And after seeing this every day, it becomes very easy to look at yourself and start asking what is wrong with you.
Maybe nothing is wrong.
But you may start thinking something is wrong.
And I think that is where the psychology of appearance becomes interesting.
We don’t just see our bodies. We have an idea in our minds about what we look like.
Sometimes that idea is not even what other people see.
There are people who are extremely conscious about a particular feature on their face, while everybody around them barely notices it. The person may spend a lot of time looking at that feature, comparing it with other people, taking pictures and checking it from different angles.
To them, the problem is very real.
And this is why I don’t think it is fair to simply say that people who want aesthetic procedures are vain or insecure.
Sometimes somebody genuinely does not like something about their appearance.
Maybe it has bothered them for years.
Maybe they were bullied about it when they were younger.
Maybe they have a scar.
Maybe they had severe acne.
Maybe their body changed after pregnancy or after losing a lot of weight.
Maybe they are getting older and they don’t like the changes.
Or maybe they simply want to look better.
There is nothing particularly wrong with that.
The problem is that sometimes we expect changing the appearance to do much more than it actually can.
A person may say, “I want to look younger.”
But what does that really mean?
Do they just want to reduce some wrinkles?
Or are they afraid of getting older?
Are they worried that people will no longer find them attractive?
Are they worried about becoming less relevant?
Are they comparing themselves with younger people?
Are they hoping that looking younger will somehow change other things in their life?
These are different things.
And the same applies to almost every other procedure.
Someone may say they want to change their nose. But perhaps the nose is not really the entire issue. Maybe they have spent years being teased about it. Maybe they have developed a strong dislike for themselves because of it.
Someone else may want exactly the same procedure simply because they don’t like the way their nose looks.
The procedure is the same.
The person is not.
This is why I think the person asking for the procedure matters just as much as the procedure itself.
There is a condition called body dysmorphic disorder, where a person can become extremely preoccupied with a perceived flaw in their appearance. And it is seen more frequently among people seeking cosmetic procedures than in the general population.
That does not mean everybody who wants cosmetic treatment has body dysmorphia.
It doesn’t.
But it does tell us something.
It tells us that sometimes the problem may be deeper than the physical feature.
And if the problem is deeper, changing the physical feature may not solve it.
The person may change their nose and then become unhappy with their chin.
Then their skin.
Then their lips.
Then something else.
At some point, we have to ask whether the problem was really the first feature.
And this is where the practitioner has a responsibility.
This is also where the current Nigerian argument about aesthetic medicine becomes more important.
A lot of the discussion is about who should be allowed to perform aesthetic procedures, what qualifications they should have, whether a doctor should perform it, whether a nurse can perform it, what an aesthetic practitioner is trained to do, what should be under supervision and what should not.
These are important questions.
I don’t think we should pretend that they are not.
Aesthetic procedures are not automatically harmless simply because they are elective. Some involve injections, medications, energy devices and surgery. Complications can happen.
So yes, training matters.
Competence matters.
The facility matters.
The ability to deal with complications matters.
But there is another form of competence that I think should also matter.
Can the practitioner recognise when a person should not have the procedure?
That is different from knowing how to perform it.
You can know how to inject a filler and still not understand why the person in front of you wants it.
You can know how to perform a procedure and still have a patient who expects that procedure to completely change their life.
And that is where things can go wrong.
Because no aesthetic procedure can guarantee happiness.
It cannot guarantee a relationship.
It cannot guarantee confidence.
It cannot guarantee that people will suddenly respect you.
It cannot guarantee that you will stop comparing yourself with other people.
It can change something physically.
That is what it is supposed to do.
What happens after that is much more complicated.
And I think this is where social media has made things worse.
Again, I don’t think we can blame everything on social media. People were conscious of their appearance before social media existed.
But we now have an environment where comparison is almost constant.
And we are not comparing ourselves with ordinary people anymore.
We are comparing ourselves with people at their best.
The picture has been selected.
The lighting is good.
The person may have makeup.
The picture may have been edited.
There may be filters.
There may have been procedures.
And we don’t see any of that.
We just see the final picture.
Then we look at ourselves in the mirror when we have just woken up.
Of course we are going to feel that something is wrong.
There is also something else that concerns me.
Aesthetic medicine is becoming increasingly commercial.
And that is understandable. It is an industry.
But when you start selling procedures by telling people that they need to “fix” themselves, it becomes a different matter.
If someone is constantly being told that their face is not good enough, their skin is not good enough, their body is not good enough, or that they can become a better version of themselves by changing something physically, eventually they may begin to believe it.
And once a person believes that something about them is fundamentally wrong, it becomes very easy to sell them a solution.
This is why I think the conversation should not only be about who is allowed to perform aesthetic procedures.
It should also be about how these procedures are presented to people.
What are we promising?
What are we telling them?
What expectations are we creating?
And what happens when the procedure does not give them what they thought it would?
I don’t think the answer is to tell everybody to simply accept themselves.
That also sounds nice but it is not realistic.
People will continue to want to change things about themselves.
Some of those changes will be perfectly reasonable.
Some people will genuinely benefit from them.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve your appearance.
But we also need to recognise that sometimes the request for a physical change is carrying something else with it.
It may be shame.
It may be insecurity.
It may be ageing.
It may be social pressure.
It may be years of being made to feel unattractive.
It may simply be personal preference.
Or it may be something much deeper.
And I think a good practitioner should be able to tell the difference, or at least know when they need to ask more questions and when they need to refer the person elsewhere.
Because perhaps the real question is not just, “Can you perform this procedure?”
Perhaps it should also be, “Should this procedure be performed on this person?”
There is a difference.
And as the aesthetic industry continues to grow in Nigeria, I think we need to have that conversation.
Not because people should not be allowed to change their appearance.
But because once we are dealing with someone’s body, their expectations and sometimes their sense of identity, the responsibility becomes bigger than simply knowing how to perform a procedure.
Sometimes a person wants to change their appearance.
And that is all it is.
But sometimes, they are hoping to change the way they feel about themselves.
And those are not always the same thing.
🧠 Curious Fact of the Week
Your perception of your own appearance is not created by your eyes alone.
Your brain combines what you see with memory, emotion, experience and expectations to create your sense of what you look like.
So yes, there is a whole lot happening between your face and that mirror.
And maybe that is why the psychology of beauty is just as interesting as the science of changing it.
🧠 Curious Fact of the Week
Your perception of your own appearance is not created by your eyes alone.
Your brain combines what you see with memory, emotion, experience and expectations to create your sense of what you look like.
So yes, there is a whole lot happening between your face and that mirror.
And maybe that is why the psychology of beauty is just as interesting as the science of changing it.
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