In this economy, it’s pretty hard to feel hot — the sweltering heat has some of us looking real frazzled, and supply chain issues have driven up the price of everything from clothes to beauty products. And then there’s social media, which has the unique ability to crush self-esteem on the regular. This week, nurse practitioner and beautician Miranda Wilson, who goes by @np.miranda on TikTok, exemplified just that. In a now-deleted viral video, Wilson picked apart the facial features of Stranger Things actress Natalia Dyer.
In the TikTok (which is no longer available on her page, but was saved and shared to Twitter by multiple people), Wilson detailed exactly how she’d change Dyer’s face via injections. Among the “treatments” she recommended: chin filler, lip injections, and botox. Wilson then photoshopped Dyer’s face to show what said changes would look like; the finished product is a perfectly generic person who looks nothing like the OG Dyer.
Many (rightfully) found the video to be extremely intrusive and criticized not only Wilson but also our culture’s obsession with changing people until they are “perfect."
“One thing they taught young me in advertising (before I left it) is that our job was to destroy self esteem,” Rafael Shimunov tweeted alongside a saved version of the video. “By targeting someone people hold as extremely beautiful, they are targeting your self esteem more than they are Natalia Dyer.” Indeed, it doesn’t take a genius to see that Dyer is a conventionally attractive person in the eyes of Hollywood and American society. And yet, even she’s not immune from criticism.
“The way people demonize other people’s unique features like natalia dyer’s jaw like can we acknowledge that her uniqueness is a huge factor in her beauty? im tired of everyone being expected to look the exact same and being insulted for not fitting the mold,” another Twitter user who goes by the handle @miyeonent commented.
To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting cosmetic surgery, and celebrities have been increasingly upfront about the procedures they’ve undergone. The problem here, though, is that to the best of our knowledge, Dyer did not ask to be picked apart like that — and we don’t know if she’s already insecure about her facial features, which would make this TikTok even more intrusive. As @miyeonent pointed out, Wilson is also perpetuating certain (mostly Eurocentric and gendered) beauty standards, and sending the message to everyone who watches that certain features are objectively superior to others. Mic reached out to Wilson for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.
Of course, this is a symptom of a larger problem. The internet is making us lose perspective of what we actually look like and pushing young people to question whether their own features are somehow “ugly” or in need of a change — something TikToker Eleanor Stern dubbed “beauty overstimulation,” as reported by The Face. Studies have also shown that social media use (which often includes comparing ourselves to others) is linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression among young people, according to Social Media Victims Law Center.
It may seem like innocent fun to distort a celebrity's face to make them look “better,” but this type of content is a testament to how obsessed we are with finding flaws in others — which ultimately translates into an obsession with changing everything about ourselves. I don’t know about ya’ll, but I spent a lot of time hating the way I looked when I was younger. It took me a while to realize that being hot is actually a state of mind, and that trying to be hot on anybody else’s terms is a damn waste of time.
