They came for the cash, the coupling and the camera time — but what really stole the show on “Love Island” this most recent season? The faces.
Frozen foreheads. Inflated lips. Razor-sharp jawlines. Cheekbones you could slice bread on.
It’s the rise of the so-called “‘Love Island’ face” — a hyper-snatched, hyper-symmetrical, hyper-injected aesthetic that’s turning heads for all the wrong reasons.
And yes, experts are alarmed.
According to double board-certified facial plastic surgeon Dr. Angela Sturm, the signature villa look is saturated with filler.
“It’s everywhere,” she told PureWow in a recent interview, “but notably in their cheeks, lips and chin.”
Add in the Botox and what you get is the full frozen package. “It’s like makeup. Certain looks may look OK in pictures, but not look natural in person or on video.”
And that, folks, is the problem.
Many of the “Love Island” contestants are Gen Zers — aka the first generation to grow up entirely under the unforgiving gaze of the front-facing camera. They’re seeking love, likes and lip flips — often in that order.
But beneath the plump pouts and arched brows is something deeper. “It represents our culture’s pursuit of perceived safety through conformity,” Erin Pash, therapist and founder of Pash Co, dished to the outlet.
There’s also a control factor. “In an uncertain world, changing your appearance can feel like one area where you have agency over your social success,” she explained.
But sometimes that “success” backfires.
A so-called “glow-down” trend is now underway — a quiet rebellion against all things overdone, with Gen Z and Millennials rushing to dissolve their filler, remove their implants and return to a more natural look.
“Patients today don’t want to look different; they just want to look better,” Upper East Side plastic surgeon Dr. David Hidalgo told The Post. “They’re just not into overdoing it anymore.”
Even “Love Island UK” royalty Molly-Mae Hague has hit undo. “If filler had been a permanent thing, and I wasn’t able to reverse what I’d done, I could have genuinely, completely destroyed my face,” she admitted.
And it’s not just regret — it’s fatigue.
“Patients do filler for a long time, and sometimes it gets to a point where it’s just overdone,” said Hidalgo. “They don’t look natural anymore, and they just abandon the whole thing.”
Dr. Sturm warned, “‘Love Island face” likely won’t age well, either. “They already look older, and we’ll continue to see filler migration and filler blindness,” she cautioned — referring to the phenomenon where people can’t even tell they’ve overdone it — to PureWow.
According to Dr. Lanna Cheuck, the tide is turning: “I think we’re entering an era of transparency, reversal of fillers, especially lips and cheeks,” she told The Post.
“The industry is really heading towards more natural and regenerative procedures.” And if that means the Islanders go from “bombshell” to “back to basics,” the real glow-up might just be… less.
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