The year 2023 saw an explosion in sales of Ozempic, this drug intended to fight diabetes with the effect of slimming, with annual sales amounting to 14 billion dollars (13.4 billion euros) as stated by the company that makes it. However, 2024 is the year of the global impact of the drug semaglutide on parallel sectors, those defined by a recent trend forecast report The Future Labs as “savings on side effects”. Due to the increase in Ozempic face and theOzempic Buttthat is to say faces characterized by an obvious loss of tone, the world of beauty has experienced an unprecedented upheaval in beauty standards.
The corps de ballet, the new ideal of post-Ozempic beauty
This year, a corps model was established, called “corps de ballet”, by the latest report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons: slim, slender (and healthy), the result not only of sudden weight loss thanks to semaglutide drugs, but also of cosmetic surgery, liposuction in the first placeto remove or reposition fat and tone, as well as physical activity to sculpt the physique. We think of the transformation of Kim Kardashianwho went from an hourglass body, with narrow hips and a prominent stomach, to a more athletic body. And as millions of people follow the Kardashians and their aesthetic practices, it seems that thinness has come back into fashion.
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Facial reshaping to adapt to the new post-Ozempic body
The ballet corps has also generated new demands in the world of cosmetic medicine and surgery. “How do I adapt my face to my body? is the question many doctors have heard in 2024. Bodies and faces, due to sagging due to rapid weight loss, have changed, which has led to an increase in treatments aimed at increasing volume, either by facial fat resurfacing or by the Morpheus8 device, which has become the hottest phenomenon in 2024, a mixture of radiofrequency and microneedling to restore lost tone. These interventions are imperceptible so as not to disproportionately swell the cheekbones and lips, but to allow facial remodeling which offers a result as natural as possible.
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In such an unpredictable and uncontrollable situation, a paradox could not fail to answer the call: in the race to lose fat, there are those who have had to restore it through autogenous adipose cell implantation surgery in order to ‘obtain a more natural facial contouring. A result which, in the United States, is promised by the Renuva protocol. As the brand’s website states, “Renuva is an innovative treatment that restores age-related volume loss, adds contours and smoothes irregularities.” Over time, Renuva is replaced with your own body fat, allowing you to achieve long-lasting, age-defying results, so you still look like yourself, only better! » Quite a program.
Makeup changes with Ozempic
Stars who adopted this aesthetic model obviously influenced their social communities, which led to the emergence of new trends in the world of makeup.
According to the machine learning platform Spate, which anticipates consumer needs, the Ozempic boom has given rise to a new ideal in makeup, the “snatched look”, i.e. from faces to cheekbones raised and with sunken cheeks. Think about Bella Hadidwhich didn’t need contouring – and reportedly saw a 10.6% drop in social media searches this year – but with a bronze effect, to create an illusion on thinned faces of a skin-like appearance healthy and radiant, a need up 33% compared to last year.
Lifted skin care, a consequence of Ozempic abuse
Faced with this tsunami, even the world of skin care did not remain inactive and reacted by launching products that act on collagen and tissue lifting. The Filorga brand, for example, reintroduced at the beginning of the year the Lift Designer and Lift Radiance lines, which are inspired by “nip & tuck” to act on tone and volume.
The prediction for 2025 is that the search for anti-aging ingredients will be more focused on sagging due to the Ozempic effect. Cosmetics Business states that “this trend will lead to the discovery of actives such as tretinoin and other retinoids, collagen-boosting peptides and antioxidant-rich compounds, such as vitamins C and E, which will be used in the development new cosmetic products adapted to this emerging population of consumers.” Tretinoin, in particular, is the only form of retinoid tested for the treatment and prevention of skin aging and acne. It binds to skin receptors to accelerate skin cell renewal and stimulate collagen production.
A very sad conclusion
In this context, one might wonder where have all the great achievements in recent years in body positivity gone, which have brought women of all sizes and shapes to the catwalks to celebrate self-acceptance? Will we ever truly be able to change our self-judgment that leads us to adapt aesthetic models to an ideal of beauty pursuing a perfection that, depending on the moment, takes on different names, from 1990s heroin chic from size 0 in the 2000s to today’s corps de ballet, but which in fact hides the lasting desire for thinness?
Originally published by Vanity Fair Italy
