Do plastic surgery and filler change people’s style essences?

I just liked this picture, but I think the actual answer is typically “no.”

I base my knowledge of style essences partly on celebrities’ faces. The big potential problem with that: celebrities love changing their faces. Filler and plastic surgery are ubiquitous in Hollywood.

So if we determine that Britney or Ashley or whatever the trendy names are nowadays has a given style type, what are the odds that she’ll have that same type 6 months or a year from now, when the trendy facial features inevitably change to rounder jawlines or hollower cheeks? What happens when our carefully-typed celebrity rushes out to buy her new face, oblivious to the havoc she’s causing for people who are trying to determine celebrities’ style essences?

Fortunately, the above scenario shouldn’t be too catastrophic, because as detailed below, plastic surgery and filler don’t tend to significantly alter people’s style types.

(And neither do less invasive facial alterations, like reshaping your eyebrows.)

Kylie Jenner as a case study and quick disclaimers

Our case study will be beautiful Kylie Jenner, because she’s reportedly altered her face considerably, and it’s easy to find pictures of her before and after her face changes.

Disclaimers—first, part of the premise of style analysis is that you don’t need plastic surgery to be beautiful.

And second, modern societies tend to hyper-fixate on physical appearance, especially celebrities’ physical appearances (and obviously I’m part of this). So it’s understandable for anyone and especially for people who grow up on TV to want to alter their looks.

The following isn’t meant as a judgment of filler or plastic surgery, beyond answering the question of whether these facial alterations do or don’t change people’s style essences.

What is Kylie Jenner’s original style type?

Based on my typing, Kylie Jenner was a Dramatic Gamine Natural prior to her face changes.

In those older photos, Kylie appears harmonious in Dramatic Gamine Natural hair and makeup (straight hair and a combo of minimal, bronzey, and dark matte makeup).

It’s a little—but not too—surprising that she doesn’t have the Romantic essence, because her mom (and sister Kendall) have a lot of Romantic.

But I’ve seen a similar phenomenon happen with other celebrities—for example, Gwyneth Paltrow’s biological mom Blythe Danner has more Ingenue than Dramatic, but Gwyneth inherited a lot of Dramatic and no significant Ingenue. So we aren’t guaranteed to inherit our parents’ most dominant essences.

Kylie’s parents, Kris Jenner and Caitlyn Jenner, are Romantic Dramatic Gamine and Natural Dramatic Classic, respectively. So based on theory and observation of how style types are inherited, it’s very likely that Kylie would inherit some combination of those 5 essences, and very unlikely that she’d inherit Ingenue or Ethereal.

Her face is fairly symmetrical, but she’s not her best in Classic fashion. And while Kris Jenner does have a lot of Romantic, none of Kylie’s facial features—low forehead, relatively straight brows, sharp eyes, thin lips, strong jawline—are characteristic of the Romantic essence.

Importantly, people with the Romantic essence do sometimes have some of those features (for example, people with the Romantic essence can have straight brows). But in Kylie’s case, she appeared most harmonious in Dramatic Natural Gamine style.

What are Kylie’s style essences after filler and surgery?

Given her apparent facial alterations, we might wonder if Kylie’s style type has changed. Especially because her lips (and other features like her eyes and cheeks) now appear significantly rounder, a characteristic that we tend to associate with the Romantic essence.

But even following filler and surgery, Kylie’s most flattering looks to my eye are Dramatic Natural Gamine ensembles, which you can see her in here. She looks so, so harmonious, beautiful, and cool in a combination of edgy, playful, and casual fashion.

Also, if we compare the below 2021 post-surgery pic of her face to two different outfits (Dramatic Gamine on the left, Romantic Dramatic Gamine on the right), you can see that her face is more harmonious with the edgy, playful Dramatic Gamine look. Her features don’t have the particular sort of poeticism to harmonize with the Romantic look. (Compare her face first to one outfit, then to other ((you can use your hand to cover whichever outfit you aren’t comparing at the moment)) and see which pairing makes your body feel more at peace and ease.)

"Kylie Jenner Vogue" (center image) by VOGUE Taiwan is licensed under CC BY 3.0. Image has been cropped. See full image via link.

Post-surgery, Kylie’s face doesn’t harmonize with Romantic looks.

I also think her best makeup and brows are Dramatic Natural Gamine: matte, earth-toned, and angular. Here’s another “after” pic of her:

Image credit: "Kylie Jenner Complex" by Josh Park is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

A lot about this makeup works. The thick brows, the earth-toned eye shadow and heavy dark eye makeup, the matte skin finish with earth-toned blush/bronzer really seem to complement her strong bone structure and intense features. But the glossy Romantic red lip looks out of place. In a matte texture, it would harmonize better with the vibe of her face.

Kylie is gorgeous. She has a lot of intense Dramatic and playful Gamine and some laidback Natural. She doesn’t to my eye have a significant amount of poetic Romantic, even with the plump lips.

How can Kylie Jenner have plump lips yet have no significant Romantic style essence?

It’s a misconception that full lips are always Romantic. For instance, Hilary Swank, Jennifer Garner, and Geena Davis, just to name a few, are all strongly Natural women with no Romantic. And they all have lips that can appear full relative to the rest of their features.

Beautiful Hilary has full lips—google her when she’s young and you’ll see she’s always had them—and like Kylie she has the Dramatic Natural Gamine face type (though Hilary has a lot more Natural and Kylie has a lot more Gamine).

It’s also a myth that full lips are only consistent with the shapes of the curving essences (Ethereal, Ingenue, Romantic). Full lips can also have a strongly Natural shape and vibe. Hilary’s lips are large and wide (horizontal), and large and wide shapes are characteristic of the Natural essence. Hilary’s lips are also partly characterized by observably blunt lines (especially surrounding her top lip). Her lips are full, but they aren’t circular (Romantic).

So, Kylie having larger lips doesn’t automatically mean that her face now has the Romantic essence.

Here she is in around 2021 for Vogue Taiwan, with observable changes from filler and surgery:

"Kylie Jenner 2021 (cropped)" by VOGUE Taiwan is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

You can see that her features—lips, brows, eyes, jaw—appear generally horizontal rather than circular and rounded in shape. The blazer is a little Classic for her vibe, and the lip makeup doesn’t appear right for her skin tone, but the other elements fit her playful and casual beauty.

Kylie is also harmonious in angular, heavily Dramatic Gamine outfits:

"139579_9314" by Walt Disney Television is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

"Kylie Jenner Vogue" by VOGUE Taiwan is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Though the above rounded hairstyle doesn’t appear optimally harmonious.

Glamorous Romantic fashion choices also aren’t ideal:

"137223_5309" by Walt Disney Television is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

In the above makeup, her face looks fairly harmonious (cover her dress with your hand to see). The edgy makeup flatters her Dramatic and Gamine essences (though a slightly lighter touch would have helped harmonize with her Natural essence).

But even with the fuller lips, glam fashion isn’t nearly as harmonious with her face as her Dramatic Natural Gamine street style. The silky gathered fabric and high slit, all very Romantic elements, just don’t work with her style type.

So, a celebrity like Kylie who’s allegedly had an extreme face transformation hasn’t substantially altered her style essences, or the makeup, hair, and outfits that most flatter her.

This suggests that even drastic plastic surgery won’t typically change a person’s style type.

Why doesn’t plastic surgery tend to alter people’s style essences?

I don’t totally know. The reason I don’t think plastic surgery and filler typically alter people’s style essences is based on my observations of Kylie and many other celebrities. So while I do think there’s good evidence for it being true, I don’t have a definite answer as to why it’s true. I’m also not anything close to an expert on plastic surgery, but I did my best to speculate:

Plastic surgery and filler are only changing part of your facial features

If you get a nose job, the surgeon doesn’t hack off your entire nose and sew a new one onto your face.

Typically surgeons make small alterations—the nose becomes a bit shorter or narrower or wider or more or less prominent. These alterations may sometimes seem dramatic, because the nose is such a prominent feature and a focal point of the face. But in reality, how many millimeters in size is a nose job actually changing the nose? Probably not many.

Further, it may be just one part of the nose that gets the most revision, like the tip, and the bridge stays fairly the same. Or the bridge is modified from the side profile but looks similar from the front. It’s seldom that all the parts of the nose are being substantially altered.

A similar principle holds for filler. Filler changes the size of the lips, but it’s not actually changing the size of the person’s mouth. So, for example, if you start out with a mouth that’s pretty long and horizontal, filler can’t change that. If you get filler, your mouth will still likely be characteristic of one of the elongated essences (Dramatic, Natural, Ethereal).

Plastic surgery and filler aren’t giving you new features. They’re working with what you already have. So people’s original style essences are plausibly still represented in their altered features.

Filler changes feature volume but has less impact on feature shape

Based on my understanding, while filler can dramatically increase the volume of the lips, it has only minimal ability to change the overall shape of the lips.

It’s like how if you fill a traditional plastic balloon with water, it’ll take on the rounded shape of the balloon. But if you fill a plastic glove with water, it’s going to be shaped like a glove, with a palm and five protruding fingers. The plastic glove is now more voluminous—it increased in size—but it retains the basic shape of a hand.

Image credit: "Water Balloons III" by Steve Wilhelm is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Prior to being filled with water, the above balloons started out small and rounded in shape, and they retain that basic shape when filled with water (despite the big change in volume).

Image Credit: "gloves1" by Andrew Huff is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

This image is of surgical gloves filled with water. Because the gloves started out much narrower in shape than the above water balloons, the gloves still have a narrower shape when filled with water. No amount of water is going to change their shape to make them resemble the spherical water balloons.

Similarly, filler can make your lips (the “balloon” or “glove” in the above analogy) larger and fuller, but it’s not going to dramatically change the contours of your lips. And that’s a key thing that determines your style type—the contours of your features.

If your lips start out rounder and circular like the water balloons, then they’ll look round and circular with filler. If they start out longer and narrower like the gloves, they still likely won’t look round and circular with filler.

This is likely also why weight loss or gain doesn’t seem to change people’s style types—changing your weight can make the volume of your face larger or smaller, but the basic shapes of your face will generally remain similar.

Plastic surgeons also try to maintain the shapes of features

The above principles also apply to plastic surgery. Good plastic surgeons understand that for plastic surgery to look natural and harmonious, alterations should appear subtle, and the shapes of the features should remain consistent with the rest of the face.

So, filler generally maintains the shape of the lips but makes them bigger, and a nose job generally maintains the shape of the nose but makes it smaller (or sometimes bigger).

Below are three celebrities who have allegedly had nose jobs. Post-nose job, they still have very different nose shapes and sizes from one another. Their plastic surgeons likely understand that to maintain harmony, the nose needs to retain its basic shape.

"139579_2906" by Walt Disney Television is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

"Goldene Kamera 2012 - Scarlett Johansson 3 (cropped, 2)" by JCS is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

"Blake Lively - ‘Cafe Society’ Opening Gala At Cannes Film Festival 2016" by centuryblack9 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Based on the available evidence, if you get thoughtful, expertly-done plastic surgery—which celebrities tend to be able to afford—the results will be consistent with the shapes and vibes of your original face and unlikely to change your style type.

Filler and plastic surgery don’t affect accuracy of typing

From an accuracy standpoint, I also don’t worry about whether filler or plastic surgery influence style type. Because say Kylie did change her style type through surgery. In my view, it’d be accurate to type her either as a Dramatic Natural Gamine OR as whatever she changed her style type to, depending on the picture I was using to type her.

So if I type an older photo of Ashley/Britney/whoever as Romantic Natural Gamine and pin that photo to the RNG board, and you agree she was an RNG in that photo but think that post-surgery she now has some Ingenue, you may be right—but my typing of the photo is still accurate. She is an RNG in that photo, regardless of what her style type is now.

What about very extreme cases?

Ultimately I don’t worry much about whether a celebrity has filler or plastic surgery, because of the above reasoning, and because based on my observations and as Kylie Jenner illustrates, even substantial face changes don’t tend to change your type.

But there’s a lot more to say about this topic, and only focusing on one celebrity isn’t sufficient evidence, so I’ll make a follow-up post.

I also may type celebrities who have had really extreme transformations to see if their efforts were sufficient to change their style types.