1 June

The epidemic of plastic surgery and facial alteration is starting to make more sense to me. Throughout history the face of a ruler has been airbrushed into masks and images, as a unifying blank canvas. Specific blemishes and marks removed, and a smooth, universal face replacing it. Today celebrities are increasingly our rulers, the US has a TV star as a president and other celebrities are central to peoples' lives too. And now with social media, even ordinary people are seen by thousands or millions of others. So the blank, featureless universal mask-face is spreading, through all levels of society.