“I’ve always been self-conscious about my chin and jaw,” says Adam—who didn’t want to use his real name—a 37-year-old real estate broker who frequently uses Instagram and TikTok to promote his business and sees a correlation between success and the chiseled jawline he got courtesy of Juvéderm. “People trust a traditionally masculine face,” he told me.
Adam was good-looking before his cosmetic procedures, but now he looks like he belongs on a reality show about high-end realtors showing houses in between settling personal feuds. If you’ve ever wondered why everyone on your social feeds now looks like they also have stepped directly out of central casting or off a billboard, there’s much more at play than judicial filtering.
A 2019 New Yorker article by Jia Tolentino coined the term “Instagram Face,” positioning it as a mostly feminine phenomenon. She described it as “the gradual emergence among professionally beautiful women of a single, Cyborgian face,” whose amalgamation of Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid, and Kendall Jenner has poreless skin that mimics silicone, high cheekbones that can read as artificial, and plump lips beyond what is typically seen in nature. This face was made possible by advances in cosmetic procedures and largely driven by the ubiquity of promoting oneself via social media.
The word Cyborgian indicates a certain baked-in exaggeration expected in female cosmetic trends. And because it’s socially acceptable for women to get work done, some even theorize that having Instagram Face denotes success and upward mobility.
It says a lot about the staid state of masculinity that men want the same heteronormative version of handsome that has defined male beauty standards for years. According to Chris Bustamante, DNP, who owns Lushful Aesthetics, a Midtown Manhattan med spa that caters primarily to men and is known for facial and sexual aesthetic work, clients come to him for traditionally masculine features, like a square jawline and strong cheekbones.
“Even some patients who identify as nonbinary want their features more defined in a masculine way. They might play with gender via makeup or clothes but want their foundation to be chiseled and defined,” he told me.
According to a 2023 YouGov study, nearly 60 percent of American men value being perceived as masculine, a desire that’s existed for years and isn’t inherently troubling on its own. However, it does feel like social media (and its cadre of extreme alpha-male influencers) has exacerbated an obsession with telegraphing one’s manliness, which manifests itself in interesting—some might say toxic—ways, ranging from rising male body dysmorphia to extreme facial augmenting like looksmaxxing or … showing up to the RNC with immovable supervillain eyebrows and a wrinkle-less, Cyborgian forehead.
Youth and virility are big parts of masculinity. Bustamante said many men in their 40s and 50s are coming in saying they’d like work done to combat ageism at work, which was echoed by the other practitioners I spoke with. Also echoed? That it’s not just aging CEOs, celebrities, or influencers going under the needle.
“When people find out what I do, they think I work with bougie people all day,” registered nurse injector Lindsey Kincaid of New Leaf Restorative Medicine—located not in a “festooned marble apartment building” along a “leafy stretch of Park Avenue,” but in a nondescript brick medical building a half mile from my go-to grocery store where I live in Asheville, North Carolina—told me, “but it’s everyday people and everyday guys coming in to get freshened up.”
Noninvasive cosmetic procedures—think Botox or fillers like the aforementioned Juvéderm—are on the rise. The American Academy of Plastic Surgeons found that noninvasive procedures for men increased by 253 percent between 2019 and 2022 (overall cosmetic procedures increased by 207 percent during the same period). They’re much more affordable than traditional plastic surgery and don’t require two weeks off work to recover. Kincaid says a consultation and treatment can happen in 45 minutes; if I wanted, I could get a Ryan Gosling–inspired jawline over my lunch break.
On Instagram—where else—I sought out everyday guys to understand their decisions to dabble in the cosmetic arts.
A doctor in his mid-30s said he’d been getting regular Botox every three months for the past few years. An early-30s account manager told me he had just got his first injections a week ago to get rid of a crease in his forehead that had always bugged him. A marketing manager hasn’t taken the plunge yet but was saving up some money to give himself a square, chiseled jawline for his 40th.
The treatments and procedures are becoming so prevalent I’ve started noticing them off my Instagram grid, too. When I met a Teva-clad friend at a brewery to discuss his regular Botox treatments, I noted that he hadn’t posted on social media since 2021. That isn’t, however, to say he’s not scrolling; the average American man spends 2.3 hours daily on social media, and 71 percent of people admit to regularly photoshopping or Facetuning posted photos. Like the social media that’s potentially inspired it, male cosmetic procedures are accessible, acceptable, and possibly moving toward banality.
A top reason male clients give Kincaid for getting work done is that they’re the face of a business in some capacity, an increasing concern in a society where we all essentially have a personal brand, and something I’ve recently been contending with.
Two years ago, I consulted a marketing colleague about how to take my freelance career more seriously. They advised me to launch an Instagram account where I could post not just my work but selfies as well—“You’re not just selling your writing; you’re also selling yourself,” I was told. “Your personal brand can help land assignments.”
So, I asked Kincaid how she’d optimize me.
She suggested light injections in my glabella to eliminate the lines between my eyes and in my temples to tamper my burgeoning crow’s feet. I could get that done for a cool $605 (they were running a 20 percent discount!), which is about the amount I might spend on a weekend trip, which is to say, not chump change but very much in this regular guy’s budget.
It’s also very close to my going rate for freelance writing assignments.
