Are We More Plastic Than Biology?
The Shift: The Engineered Body (2020–2025)
In the past five years, especially after COVID, there has been a sharp rise in demand for cosmetic procedures and bodily modification. Viewers see their favorite celebrities—such as Tom Cruise or Kylie Jenner—who have stuffed their faces and bodies with Botox and implants, now almost unrecognizable compared to the people they were years prior. Their ethnic features and phenotypic ancestral history embedded in their genome are so easily disguised by the prick of a needle and the incision of a scalpel. Tom Cruise’s Super Bowl ad, in fact, went viral for his “stretched” face. One viewer noted:
“Tom Cruise on this #SuperBowlLIX talking about pressure — there is no greater pressure than that of his skin trying to stay stretched on his face.” (The Express, 2025)
What makes this moment so telling isn’t just celebrity vanity, it’s how normal this level of bodily editing has become. The human face is no longer treated as something fixed or inherited. It’s something adjustable. And this isn’t just a Hollywood problem. According to CC Plastic Surgery (2025), cosmetic surgical procedures rose by roughly 5% in 2023, while minimally invasive treatments like Botox and fillers increased by 7%. Nearly 1.6 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in the U.S. that year alone, with younger adults increasingly seeking “preventative” treatments.
Biology, once destiny, now feels like a rough draft. Cultural Contradictions: “Natural Beauty” in the Age of Surgery Society’s opinion on cosmetic surgery, at least on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, appears to be quite opposed to the idea, constantly promoting natural features and the beauty of aging. Ironically, public figures who preach “natural features” have been exposed on several occasions for cosmetic procedures they themselves have undergone. For example, Tyra Banks. Years of media pestering about her alleged nose job led her to truthfully confront the public that she had received a rhinoplasty early on in her career. This contradiction, publicly celebrating authenticity while privately modifying the self, shows how deeply normalized cosmetic intervention has become. We’re told to love our natural faces while being surrounded by faces that are anything but.
Cyberpunk in the Flesh: The Body as Hardware
The unsettling part about all of this is not just the culture or vanity, but how closely it mirrors cyberpunk theory in the present day. In cyberpunk worlds, the human body is not seen as a unique creation but as fixed hardware that can be upgraded at any time. Age becomes a concept. Genetic traits become an identity the individual designs. We are long past fiction when a magical syringe can erase wrinkles—proof that a person has lived, and alter features that can no longer be identified as lineage. Yet society insists this obsession with appearance is ridiculous and vain, even as the market for bodily enhancement explodes. Cyberpunk is obsessed with collapsed boundaries, especially the line between the human and the manufactured. Plastic surgery is that collapse in slow motion. We’re not installing robotic arms or neural implants (yet), but we are editing our flesh to match digital standards. The face in the mirror is now chasing the face on Instagram filters. Biology is no longer destiny, it’s a draft. Posthumanism, one of the core ideas behind cyberpunk, argues that technology is redefining what it even means to be human. And honestly, that sounds dramatic until you realize how normal it’s become to “fix” your face the same way you’d update your phone. Whether that be Botox as maintenance, fillers as enhancement, or surgery as rebranding. The human body is starting to look less like something you are and more like something you manage.
The Upgrade Shop: Beauty as a Consumer Product
In cyberpunk movies like Blade Runner, bodies are modified, faces are customizable, and identity is something you can swap out. We’re not living in neon megacities yet, but cosmetic clinics already function like real-world upgrade shops. Walk in with insecurity, walk out with a new version of your face. Pay enough money and you can buy proximity to a beauty ideal that didn’t even exist before social media flattened everyone into the same algorithm-approved look. And the wild part is how quietly normalized it all is. It’s no longer “extreme” to get work done, it’s framed as self-care and preventative maintenance. But cyberpunk always warned about this exact slippery slope: when enhancement becomes optional at first, then expected, and eventually required just to keep up.
Implications: The Posthuman Face
So when people joke about Tom Cruise’s stretched skin or Kylie Jenner’s unrecognizable face, they’re not just mocking celebrities. They’re reacting to a future that feels off, uncanny, and way too close. A future where the boundary between natural and artificial has dissolved. A future where your face isn’t really yours anymore. It’s a project. A product. A performance. Who benefits? The cosmetic surgery industry. Influencers. Corporations monetizing insecurity. Who is impacted? Young people. Women disproportionately. Anyone whose social value is now tied to appearance. The cyberpunk future isn’t about robotic arms. It’s about waking up and realizing your face is no longer yours.
Sources CC Plastic Surgery. (2025). Why plastic surgery demand is rising in the U.S. https://www.ccplasticsurgery.com/blog/why-plastic-surgery-demand-is-rising-in-the-u-s The Express. (2025). Tom Cruise’s face sparks concern after Super Bowl ad. https://www.the-express.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/163179/tom-cruise-face-concern-super-bowl-ad Scott, R. (Director). (1982). Blade Runner [Film]. Warner Bros.