The Era of Procedure Positivity Should we be celebrating body modification and extreme beauty routines?

FIVE YEARS AGO, Rachel Harrison began feeling tired. She had just turned 44 and was opening her own public-relations agency.

- Social Studies: Zoe Dubno

“Between the alcohol, the cigarettes, and eating out, my body just felt like it was falling apart,” she says. So she quit smoking, found an Upper East Side plastic surgeon with a Picasso in his office, “spent an entire Sunday reading scientific studies about peptides,” and polled friends about supplements. Later, she used ChatGPT to map out a routine that integrated everything she’d learned. Now, “I don’t think there’s anything I don’t do.” Her “stack” of beauty and wellness treatments reads like it’s been encrypted through the Enigma machine. “I take a copper peptide called GHK-Cu. And AOD-9604. And NAD+. I have sermorelin and ipamorelin, though I’m not sure what those do. I take HMB and vitamin D3, reishi mushrooms and cranberry pills, taurine and biotin, HealthyCell telomere length gel packs.” She gets French vitamins, given to her by her osteopath, Jean-Michel Été, who sees Madonna, Experience the world's finest appliances Gwyneth Paltrow, and Katy Perry. “I break open the capsules and pour them into a Daily Harvest shake. It tastes like absolute shit.” She owns the Dennis Gross red-light-therapy mask, a Lyma laser, and a micro-needling pen.

Ten years ago, Glossier founder Emily Weiss published a diary outlining her wedding planning on her beauty blog, Into the Gloss. The preparations were “Not of the venue, guest list, or seating chart—that was fairly easy,” she wrote. “But of my limbs, skin, wanted hair, unwanted hair, nails, muscles, digestive tract, lashes and brows.” To look her best, Weiss ate clean, got an expensive facial and a microcurrent treatment, and worked out with a supermodel’s trainer. She got a massage and upper-lip laser, had a gel manicure, and got her eyebrows waxed.