The Kardashians are suddenly being honest about their plastic surgery – and you’re right to be suspicious | OneFootball

The Kardashians are suddenly being honest about their plastic surgery – and you’re right to be suspicious | OneFootball

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The Independent

·6 July 2025

The Kardashians are suddenly being honest about their plastic surgery – and you’re right to be suspicious

Article image:The Kardashians are suddenly being honest about their plastic surgery – and you’re right to be suspicious

I’m ashamed to admit that I spent the majority of my teens at the whims of the Kardashian family and their multi-billion-dollar beauty empire. I went to extreme lengths to emulate their look. In 2015, I scrambled to buy Kylie Jenner’s viral lip-plumping kit that she promised would produce a pout like her own. The wages from my first job were spent slowly collecting each MAC Cosmetics lip pencil that she’d recommended. I would shade my eyebrows using a deep brunette pomade to match hers. It was Kylie’s older half-sister, the famous Kim Kardashian, who taught me how to contour my face (via a YouTube tutorial, no less). You could say I was influenced. But I’d argue it was deeper than a mere surface-level influencing – the family set a standard of beauty that continues to reign today in the form of the archetypal “Instagram face” (think button nose, sharp cheekbones, inflated lips). And women like me followed along.

A decade later, I’m no longer as impressionable. And that’s why I’m alarmed by the Kardashians’ recent move into total plastic surgery and tweak-ment transparency, following years of cloak-and-dagger and pseudo-denials. Last weekend, Khloe Kardashian, the eldest sister of the Kardashian/Jenner clan, published a list of her facial procedures. They included, but were not limited to, a nose job, skin lightening, Botox, filler, collagen injections and regular “salmon sperm facials”. Only weeks earlier did Khloe’s 27-year-old half-sister Kylie share the specifics of her second breast enlargement procedure, including the size, placement and doctor. When a fan asked her to share the magical components – presumably for their own upcoming appointment – Kylie obliged, writing: “445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!!!!. Silicone!!! Garth Fisher!!! Hope this helps lol.” It was dubbed by fans as her “boob job recipe”; dished out so candidly as if it were instructions for whipping up a quick pasta dish. Their mother, Kris Jenner, also recently named the New York City-based facelift specialist who was behind her latest glow-up.


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This new wave of transparency is extremely out of character. Despite years of speculation over their respective surgeries, the Kardashian-Jenners have often avoided questions or denied rumours completely. Really, their caginess about their surgeries has only worked to uphold the standard of beauty that they’ve been peddling for the best part of a decade; keeping us in the dark while they made billions selling their tools of mass beautification through their various cosmetic, clothing and lingerie companies. In that time, fans have felt like the family has owed them an explanation. Take Kylie, for example: while promoting her viral lip kits from her brand Kylie Cosmetics in 2015, she denied rumours that she had filler injected into her lips (even though before-and-after pictures showed two substantially different lip sizes over the years). She claimed that it was merely her handiwork with a lip liner pencil that gave her lips an “illusion” of plumpness. She admitted to having the work done months later, during an episode of Keeping Up with theKardashians.

There’s also Kim, who has admitted to receiving Botox injections and undergoing breast augmentation surgery – but absolutely nothing else. Her claim to be otherwise au naturel has undoubtedly helped the success of her $4bn shapewear company Skims, which sells products to enhance hourglass silhouettes, and her skincare brand SKKN by Kim.

We have a right, then, to be suspicious about this sudden run of honesty. Is it because, as cosmetic surgery has been normalised (plenty of which has been their doing), they feel comfortable enough to tell the truth without judgement? Maybe it’s a PR move to humanise them. But if you were to analyse the current rapport these reality stars have with their fans on social media, it seems as though they believe they are helping people by sharing their surgery hacks and measurements.

Whatever their motives, there are already worrying consequences to this newfound openness. With a combined following of more than 1.5bn followers between the sisters, there are murky ethics surrounding the promotion and celebration of surgery. I believe everyone has the right to choose what they want to do with their body, but when Kylie publishes her surgery details online, she must be aware that many of her young female fans are likely to follow suit. (And that’s despite Kylie admitting in 2023 that she regretted undergoing breast augmentation at the age of 19, and would be “heartbroken” if her young daughter Stormi one day did the same.)

What is perhaps even more disturbing, though, is that the fan reaction to Kylie’s candid admission about her breast surgery was met with overwhelming praise. She was celebrated as a “girl’s girl” for sharing this once-secret enigma code. And that celebration wasn’t one of vindication – you know, that selfish pang of relief you feel when you learn that an aesthetically goddess-like celebrity wasn’t actually born that way. Instead the response was one of excitement, and even of empowerment. The Kylie Effect has prompted more women to share the “recipe” behind their own looks on TikTok, serving up advice about the best placement of implants, plastic surgery clinics they’d recommend, post-recovery tips and more, with many stating that their inspiration was Kylie or her sister Kendall. This sense of “empowerment” surrounding plastic surgery is likely filling the TikTok feeds of thousands of teenagers, potentially teaching them that their bodies are only lovable after undergoing surgery.

Article image:The Kardashians are suddenly being honest about their plastic surgery – and you’re right to be suspicious

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Kylie recently shared the specifics of her second breast enlargement procedure, including the size, placement and doctor (Getty)

You could argue that it’s only the wealthy who can afford to act on this wave of surgery influence. But cosmetic surgery has never been more popular or accessible. Recent data published in the British Beauty Council’s Value of Beauty 2025 report showed that, for the first time, Britons were splashing more cash on beauty than on attending football matches, going to the gym and visiting amusement parks combined. The fastest growing area was beauty services and non-invasive treatments like filler and Botox, which had increased by 15 per cent last year. And experts from across the field have reported a rise in the number of young people seeking these aesthetic treatments. According to recent findings from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), even people seeking shorter-term treatments are transitioning from non-invasive work to far more permanent solutions: meaning going under the knife due to the “fatigue” of repeated upkeep appointments.

I may have never undergone surgery to look like Kylie Jenner, but I know first hand how you can subconsciously follow the lead of a celebrity’s beauty standards. I did, cognitively, always know that Kylie had injectables in her lips – even when she denied it – but that didn’t stop me from buying the lip kits (and, embarrassingly, trying out that foul Kylie Jenner lip challenge in 2015, in which many of her followers began sucking on bottles or shot glasses until their lips were temporarily swollen and enlarged). Sharing extensive details of your surgery on a large platform to a young audience, then, feels extremely irresponsible. I, at least, only wasted money on overpriced, Jenner-branded lip products. The repercussions for their most ardent fans today will be far more permanent.

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