A new “glow-down” trend, driven by social media and celebrities, has Gen Z and Millennial women striving to reclaim a more subtle, natural look by dissolving fillers and even removing implants.
“Patients today don’t want to look different, they just want to look better,” plastic surgeon Dr. David Hidalgo told The Post. “They’re just not into overdoing it anymore.”
Orlando native Stevie Hatch first went under the knife at age 18 — transforming from “not even an A cup” breasts to a D cup with 450 cc implants.
After sixteen years, she ditched the implants completely a year and a half ago.
“I had kind of outgrown what they represented,” Hatch, now 38, told The Post. “I got them to feel more confident, but some of that is shaped by cultural narratives and the male gaze. When I got implants, it was for me originally, but the size was not for me.”
Hatch, who works in corporate sales, said the explant surgery was “like a reset.”
“Removing my implants wasn’t about shame. It was more just kind of reclaiming myself,” she explained. “I wanted to come home to my body, and it did feel like a homecoming. It felt like the absolute right thing to do, because it was sort of shedding a past identity.”
She posted about her experience on TikTok and says her video still gets comments on a daily basis from other women thinking of ditching their implants.
And several celebrities have made headlines for ditching their overdone looks as of late.
OnlyFans personality Sami Sheen, the 21-year-old daughter of Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, decided to remove her breast implants this year, after suspecting they were causing health issues.
British “Love Island” cast member Molly-Mae Hague, 26, dissolved her fillers this year, too, admitting, “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.”
Olivia Culpo, 33, had her lip filler dissolved last year. And Ariana Grande, 32, recently joked that she was “four years clean” from botox and filler: “I hope my smile lines get deeper and deeper. And I laugh more and more, and I just think aging can be such a beautiful thing.”
“I think we’re entering an era of transparency, reversal of fillers, especially lips and cheeks,” Central Park South cosmetic surgeon Dr. Lanna Cheuck told The Post. “The industry is really heading towards more natural and regenerative procedures.”
She attributes the recent surge of surgery and filler reversal to social media and celebrity influence.
Rylii Warnick, an aesthetician in Salt Lake City, Utah, recently decided to dissolve her lip filler. She first started injecting her lips in 2020 but says it “really quickly turned into constantly chasing that fresh off the needle look.
“It’s really easy to get facial dysmorphia and constantly think you need to be doing something to your face to be improving it, but it can really quickly get out of hand,” she said.
The 28-year-old realized last year that she was “overdone” and her lips were losing shape, so she dissolved all of her filler.
“I realized that, if you start fillers really young, it can make you look a lot older than you actually are. It can give you a more mature look,” Warnick told The Post.
She says being free of the needle has been liberating: “I love looking more natural, and I love the simplicity of not having to go get my filler touched up every six months.”
Dr. Hidalgo describes this experience as “filler fatigue.” “Patients do filler for a long time, and sometimes it gets to a point where it’s just overdone. They don’t look natural anymore, and they just abandon the whole thing,” he observed.
Hidalgo reports recently noticing “a huge influx of people wanting filler dissolved” at his Upper East Side practice, as well as women looking to downsize breast implants to “much more conservative” sizes.
Shannon Wilson got a breast augmentation in 2021, but found the implants impeded her ability to move freely: “I’ve always been a runner. I’ve always been a soccer girl. And, as an athlete, I was just so weighed down. I was uncomfortable, and I wasn’t able to perform.”
After less than two years, she was back at the doctor getting an explant surgery.
“I was very self-conscious,” Wilson, 30, of Jupiter, Florida, said. “I didn’t like how I looked at all. You have these 5-pound things in your system. It didn’t look good, it didn’t feel good.
“I’m completely confident, and I feel very good,” Wilson said now. “I’m team small boob or just natural boob.”
