Why are celebrities so keen to deny cosmetic work?

Lindsay Lohan’s dramatically different look sparked a lot of discussion when she debuted it earlier this year, with social media filled with speculation over various different “undetectable” procedures she might have undergone to achieve the look. When Lohan was finally asked about it, she attributed the change to “a morning cold face towel” and Avene skincare. Around the same time, Ariana Grande denied she’s had any cosmetic surgery on a lie detector test (famously inadmissible in court). Prominent beauty accounts such as IGFamousbyDana expressed anger at the statement, writing in an Instagram post, “I’m so annoyed. Her work isn’t even subtle, but she must think we’re stupid?”

Celebrities have a long tradition of denying cosmetic work (only to recant on it down the line). Kylie Jenner spent years deflecting questions about her enhanced lips before finally admitting to fillers. She then routinely denied surgery, claiming her larger chest was a result of periods and puberty, before confessing to a breast augmentation. Similarly, Bella Hadid challenged surgery speculation in an interview with InStyle, declaring, “We can do a scan of my face, darling. I’m scared of putting fillers into my lips. I wouldn’t want to mess up my face.” In 2022, the model confessed she’d actually had a nose job at 14.

Kim Kardashian had a butt X-ray in 2011 to prove her bum was ‘real’ and she hadn’t had implants (despite speculation she had a BBL fat transfer which wouldn’t appear on a scan), while in 2005, Tyra Banks hired a sonogram to prove she was all natural after condemning surgery in the industry, only to later confess to having a rhinoplasty in the 90s.

To what extent celebrities owe us the truth about undergoing plastic surgery is a topic that has been much debated and no doubt will continue to be for many years to come. But the fact that so many continue to lie and deny proves that there is still a deep cultural belief that “natural” beauty is a moral achievement and that there is a shame inherent in changing your face in an “artificial” manner. When celebrities deny beauty work, they often attribute their transformations to moralistic lifestyle changes or natural bodily phenomena such as periods, pregnancy or illness. This framing suggests an almost fairytale narrative that physical beauty is a reward for good behaviour.

“It’s actually funny watching people still try to diminish Lindsay Lohan’s comeback by pretending she had so much surgery when in reality she got sober, turned her life around, and had a baby,” one viral tweet from a Lohan fan stated. “You can’t replicate this glow even with all the surgery and make-up in the world.” This narrative of moral redemption manifesting physically isn’t new; historically, physiognomy, the pseudoscience of determining character from physical features, linked moral virtue to physical beauty. Today, this manifests in what sociologist Meredith Jones calls “moral cosmetics” – the idea that good behaviour should be visible on the body.

Philosopher Heather Widdows, in her book Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, argues that we’ve moved from seeing beauty as merely aesthetic to viewing it as a moral imperative. “Beauty has become an ethical ideal,” she writes, “one that signals not just how we look, but who we are.” The implications are troubling. When we insist that beauty must be ‘natural’ to be legitimate, we’re not just setting impossible standards – we’re making moral judgments. Our natural beauty ideal, then, isn’t really about being natural at all, it’s about performing naturalness in a way that signals moral superiority. And the people who are able to best perform naturalness are the ones who have the money to get the best quality of work done, which is creating a widening beauty class divide and punishing people who are on lower incomes. This explains why celebrities might go to extraordinary lengths to deny obvious cosmetic work; admitting to ‘artificial’ enhancement becomes tantamount to admitting moral failure.

The rhetoric around Lohan’s transformation creates a false equivalence between ethical behaviour and physical appearance, suggesting that those who maintain their beauty ‘naturally’ are somehow more virtuous than those who seek surgical intervention. When fans point out the obvious surgical work, they’re accused of diminishing her personal growth story, as if acknowledging the presence of cosmetic procedures somehow invalidates her broader journey of recovery and motherhood. This false dichotomy – that one must either be surgically enhanced or morally transformed, but never both – speaks to our culture’s persistent need to frame beauty in moral terms.

The impact extends beyond celebrity culture. By framing beauty as a moral achievement rather than what it often is – a combination of genetics, resources and medical intervention – we create an impossible standard. Women are expected to meet increasingly demanding beauty standards while maintaining the fiction that their appearance is entirely ‘natural’. The pressure to be beautiful becomes entangled with the pressure to be ‘good’.

When celebrities lie about cosmetic work being “natural” it causes a wider ripple effect into culture. Facial plastic surgeon Dr Isabel Fernandez-Carrera Gonzalez explains, “It is a lie, and what happens with all lies is that reality becomes distorted. The general perception of ‘natural’ beauty shifts to unattainable goals. We start aiming for certain looks as if they are achievable without cosmetic procedures when they are not. We invest money and time into it, and we may even cross paths with people who would take advantage of us.”

The challenge lies in the fundamental contradiction of our digital age. We demand authenticity while preferring edited content, fear showing our real selves while expecting complete transparency from others, and claim to distrust image manipulation while engaging with heavily filtered content. In our highly curated online spaces, we’re encouraged to be our ’real’ selves, while those who conform to unrealistic standards achieve the most success.

For some fans, the denial of overt plastic surgery can feel patronising, as if celebrities are underestimating their intelligence, looking down on them from up on high. When celebrities lie about beauty work, it can feel like visual gaslighting – being told that what we see isn’t reality. But the deeper issue isn’t about deception; it’s about a culture that equates beauty with virtue. ”If everyone felt confident enough to come clean about plastic surgery and other touch-ups,” says Dr Fernandez-Carrera Gonzalez, “it would reflect how hard beauty standards pressures are for all of us”. While we are not directly responsible for this system, we are often the ones enforcing it. As I discuss in my book Pixel Flesh, women and girls are getting cosmetic surgery now not to appear ‘beautiful’ but to appear ‘normal’, to be good enough to simply exist in the world – a fact surely more devastating. To admit that we are not cured of cultural conditioning isn’t a fundamental flaw in our womanhood but a necessary step in assigning accountability to the right structures.

As we navigate an increasingly filtered and edited world, the line between reality and artifice continues to blur. Celebrities might not think we’re stupid, but they’re betting on our willingness to suspend disbelief, to buy into the fantasy they’re selling – literally and figuratively. Perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves what we lose when we accept these lies as truth – when we accept beauty as a moral imperative – and what we might gain from demanding more honesty from those who profit from our aspiration. The real transformation we need isn’t physical – it’s separating the idea of looking good from being good.