We are about to enter the ‘Undetectable Era’ of beauty

A video of Christina Aguilera has come up on my TikTok feed multiple times over the past few weeks. Going to the comments, it’s abundantly clear what has caused this clip to go viral. Dressed in an anime-cosplay monochrome look for a performance in Osaka, with her hair pinned high and flawlessly blended diamanté-encrusted make-up, it’s not just that Aguilera looks “good” for her age (which is 43), she looks 20 years younger. As one commenter puts it, “wait what am I back in 2002.” 

“The Undetectable Era” is what the first video on the topic labels it as. “What people are doing to their face in the next year is going to blow you away,” plastic surgeon Dr Prem Tripathi proclaims, referencing the video of Xtina. “The time in aesthetics that we’ve all hoped for and waited for where the procedures that people are having done to their face are not detectable.” Speculation in the comments make the whole thing seem even more like the plot of a sci-fi film. Exosomes, Sculptra, upper blepharoplasty, Profhilo… One comment asks “what about salmon DNA?”, to which Dr Tripathi replies “Big right now!”

It’s tempting to dive into the vortex of unsolicited online speculation over what Xtina has done to her face or, as many people want to know, who her surgeon is. There’s earnest curiosity about what list of ‘undetectable’ procedures could realistically entail because this latest iteration of physical evolution is something new. It feels uncanny to see cosmetic work devoid of any of the telltale signs we’ve become so accustomed to. But a larger question looms: if this is the new era of beauty, what does it mean for all of us?

“In plastic surgery, undetectable results are what we’ve always strived for,” Dr Tripathi tells me over the phone from California. “We strive for dramatic results – that when you look at a before and after, they’re clearly dramatic – but undetectable in the sense that if you see somebody you know walking down the street, you wouldn’t notice anything. I think the undetectable part is that it’s done so well, so beautifully, that to the natural observer it just looks like a person who’s maintained some youth.”

Responsible for this move towards work becoming “undetectable”, Dr Trapathi explains, is a shift of focus towards skincare, with cutting-edge procedures like growth factors revolutionising the technology. “Growth factors used to be something we would get from our patient’s blood, but now we’re able to source them from things like bone marrow, umbilical cords, and are even bioengineering them in the lab. These treatments can dramatically improve the ageing process of the skin. It’s taking the aesthetic skin world to an entirely new level.” Dr Trapathi says that his assumption is that, rather than going under the knife, everyone in Hollywood is getting continuous skin treatments. “These skin boosters, skin treatments, growth factors, all of that stuff, they’re just readily available at their fingertips with little downtime.”

The pendulum swing from the previously recognisable ‘done’ look to a more subtle ‘facial rejuvenation,’ isn’t just about technical advancements, however, but is also a matter of taste. “In the last few years, things went overboard,” Dr Prepathi opines. “Right now, the natural aesthetic is what people are moving towards all aspects of make-up and beauty. It’s a little bit more refined and just less in your face.” So the “Undetectable Era” is a new coding of cosmetic beauty that is perhaps not so new. In fact, this may be the Glossier, girlbossification of optimised facial transformation, and the medical world is finally catching up.

“This is the first time for me where I’ve seen work done and it’s felt truly dystopian” – Ellen Atlanta

“This is the first time for me where I’ve seen work done and it’s felt truly dystopian,” Ellen Atlanta says about the viral Xtina TikTok. As the author of Pixel Flesh, a book investigating how toxic beauty culture harms women in the internet age, Atlanta is somewhat of an expert on the topic. “It really comes down to class and status,” Atlanta explains. “When you think of brands and designer fashion, low culture is typically categorised by being more blatant. We see that in beauty culture with more obvious hair extensions or dramatic lip filler or pristine white veneers.”

Beauty has long served the ruling classes, letting the elite control social currency through implementing and sustaining the deemed desirable look. However, once a certain trend has trickled down to become ubiquitous, and no longer exclusive, it loses its desirability. As cosmetic work has become more accessible, more affordable and more readily-available in the last few years, it’s no longer a status symbol to appear as if you’ve had work done. Alongside that, with the widespread economic downturn and a return to fiscal frugality in the last few years, culture has mirrored accordingly, pivoting swiftly away from displays of ostentatious wealth and yassified, Kardashian-coded Instagram Face to the ‘Clean Girl’ aesthetic, recession-core and stealth wealth.

But, when it comes to “undetectable” cosmetic work, what will this shift mean from a psychological standpoint? “There is this compartmentalisation, psychologically. There is definitely a cognitive dissonance,” Ailey Jolie, a psychotherapist specialising in embodiment, explains. On top of this, there is the added complexity of the current state of “choice” feminism, and the way in which cosmetic work is positioned as an “empowering” and “autonomous” decision unrelated to the fact that there are very real rewards for adhering to the prescriptive beauty ideals. “A woman’s perceived value online diminishes as she ages,” Atlanta tells me, referencing a report that discovered a 153.6 per cent pay gap between influencers aged 18 to 30 and those aged 30 to 45.

“We keep framing it as, ‘I don’t give a fuck about what people think, I’m going to do this for me.’ I wonder when we will seriously start questioning the language of this being ‘empowering’?” says Jolie. “What does it mean to be presenting as a 20 year old or 25 year old when your known age is 55 and you have all that life experience and all that wisdom? What will it be like to have an interpersonal connection with someone when they’re not accurately perceiving you?”

Ultimately, the uncomfortable truth of Xtina’s transformation and the surrounding furore is that, despite her decades of fame, success and indisputable talent, beauty and the appearance of youth – whether real or an illusion – really matters more than anything else. The Undetectable Era could herald a time where many older women (if they can afford it) are able to regain their lost youth and prolong their career, albeit temporarily. It also indicates the ever narrowing gap between our real selves and how we perform online with the erasure of innate selfhood in pursuit of an ever more evasive idea of perfection. How far are we willing to go to stay young, beautiful and relevant? Will we ever age gracefully again? Did we ever really want to age gracefully at all?