Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Jonathan Yeo:Try Bonding With Baby After A Facelift

June 01, 2014

PLASTIC surgery is homogenising the way people look and has led to mothers having problems bonding with their babies, according to Britain's best-known portrait artist.

Jonathan Yeo, who has produced a series of studies on cosmetic surgery, said it was a fashion that was having drastic consequences.

The creator of some of the most famous portraits of our time, including of Tony Blair and David Cameron, said that the desire to go under the knife for cosmetic reasons was "crazy".
He cited research from the United States indicating that mothers who had undergone treatment, including Botox injections, were having trouble bonding with their babies.

"It is homogenising the way we look," he told the Hay Festival. "Which is a strange thing in itself, this fashion in beauty. There is research showing that babies are not bonding with their mums because babies only have facial reactions to go on and because their faces were not moving in the right direction, or moving at all.

"What are the unintended long-term consequences of these things that we are doing casually for our own gratification? Aside from the fact it is risky, it is painful, it is expensive, it is often quite obvious you have had it done."

He said that in certain parts of the world people "don't mind bad plastic surgery because it is a fashion thing: they want people to know they have had it done".

Studies in the US have found that while Botox may limit a mother's forms of communication with a newborn baby, it could also hinder the patient's ability to understand the emotions of others. The theory is that humans naturally imitate other's expressions when conversing, which sends a signal to the brain allowing us to interpret the meaning.

Yeo, who had a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery,(clip above), said he believed that in the future we would look back on the fad for cosmetic surgery in the same way as we think of medicine in the Middle Ages.

He said that he had first become interested in plastic surgery when he had been in California and a "tall pretty blonde walked past, then again and then for a third time and I realised it was different people going to the same doctor".

He added: "It is a funny time. I think we will look back on this time like we do on people using leeches and wonder why we did it. I think it is quite crazy. I want to document it. It is the big story of our era."

The artist said that while plastic surgery was influencing the human face, the rise of the selfie was affecting portrait painting.

The proliferation of selfies and the rise of social media had "made us much more aware of what constitutes an image of ourselves — and what other people are communicating about themselves in the choice of these little passport photos means we become much more sophisticated portrait readers". He said that because "everybody is so used to the selfie and simple head shot image" there was now "more fun" to be had with backgrounds to his portraits than there had been in the past.

Yeo questioned whether the famous self-portrait of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, which was recently saved for the nation after a fundraising appeal and is now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, would have the same impact if painted today.

Describing the painting as having something "magical", he said: "If that was painted by someone now, would it have the same effect? Or would it be like a ridiculous Facebook photo that probably bears no relation to what you actually look like?"

He said it was now the job of portraitists, in the day of "image manipulation", to be "truthful and meaningful".

By David Sanderson