Shafaq News
Sarah Muzhir did not walk into the cosmetic clinic this time
to enhance her face. She went in hoping to recover it. In her twenties, Sarah
had spent years moving between clinics, encouraged by advertisements and social
media posts promising beauty, confidence, and self-improvement. Each visit
ended the same way: another injection, another “adjustment,” another promise
that this would be the last.
“No one ever talked about consequences,” she recalled to
Shafaq News. “Only about what needed fixing next.”
What began as a minor cosmetic enhancement slowly turned
into a cycle. Her features softened, then blurred. The face she saw in the
mirror no longer felt like her own. Youthful contours gave way to swelling and
imbalance. Over time, all traces of her natural features —the beauty of youth
and individuality— faded away.
This time, Sarah chose to dissolve the fillers altogether.
She wanted to return to her natural appearance. “I wasn’t trying to look better
anymore, I was just trying to look like myself again.”
She also began exploring less invasive treatments to address
sagging, though the emotional toll lingered. The regret for entering clinics
she never truly needed weighed heavily.
Undoing the Artifice
Two sisters, Tiba and Rusul, are among those trying to undo
the damage.
“My face became grotesquely swollen after years of
injections,” Tiba told Shafaq News. “I couldn’t tell my face from my sister’s,
or from other girls’. We all started to look the same.”
For Rusul, the moment of realization came in public spaces.
“You walk into a mall or a restaurant and see your face repeated again and
again. That was painful,” she added.
Both sisters pointed to aggressive online marketing and
discounted cosmetic packages as the trigger. “The offers were tempting. No one
warned us where this could lead,” Rusul recalled.
Some clinics even promoted filler removal with slogans like
“by yourself, not copy,” signaling a growing niche for women seeking to undo
previous procedures.
The Digital Mirage
For generations, beauty standards in Iraq valued natural
features, modesty, and personal character. Cosmetic procedures were rare, and
appearance was not expected to override social values or identity.
That balance has shifted sharply over the past two decades.
Social media platforms now define attractiveness through filtered, edited, and
surgically enhanced images. Influencers and celebrities promote sculpted
cheekbones, full lips, and sharply contoured faces as benchmarks of success and
desirability.
The pressure to conform has been relentless. Many young
women compare themselves to digital images that are neither natural nor
attainable, internalizing the belief that cosmetic intervention is necessary to
be accepted, admired, or chosen. This pressure extends beyond appearance,
influencing self-worth, social standing, and even marriage prospects — turning
beauty into a competitive, standardized currency.
Read more: New rules for beauty: Iraq tightens regulations for cosmetic procedures
Inside the Mirror
Speaking to Shafaq News, cosmetic specialist Shaimaa
Al-Kamali attributed the filler boom to deeper psychological vulnerabilities.
“Beauty begins with mental health,” she noted, pointing out that “What we are
seeing is not a lack of beauty, but a lack of self-acceptance.”
Al-Kamali explained that many women seek cosmetic procedures
without having any real physical flaw. Instead, they arrive carrying internalized
dissatisfaction fueled by comparison and unrealistic expectations, a
vulnerability some clinics exploit for profit.
She described her professional stance: although she has
worked in cosmetic medicine since 2016, she has performed filler injections in
only three cases, all strictly cosmetic, and refuses lip fillers or facial
overfilling. “I always advocate for preserving the natural youth of the skin
without altering features.”
Repeated filler injections stretch the skin and create
dependency on increasingly larger volumes, eventually leading to “overfilling,”
a stage where facial harmony is lost. While fillers can be dissolved, the
process is neither simple nor guaranteed.
“Removal does not restore the face automatically,” she
warned, recommending collagen-stimulating treatments as a safer alternative,
which offer natural firmness and radiance without altering the face.
Profit over Person
Behind many of these stories lies a cosmetic industry that
expanded rapidly and unevenly after 2003.
As demand surged, hundreds of cosmetic centers opened across
Iraq, many operated by unqualified individuals —beauticians, salon owners, or
non-specialists performing invasive procedures without proper oversight. Health
officials later acknowledged that only about 105 cosmetic centers nationwide
are officially licensed, while hundreds operate illegally, particularly in
Baghdad.
In recent months, the Ministry of Health launched inspection
campaigns, shutting down more than 100 centers and banning dentists from performing
cosmetic injections such as fillers and Botox.
Parliamentary committees have intervened following
complaints about unlicensed staff administering procedures, while medical
authorities have warned that the commercial misuse of the term “cosmetic” blurred
the line between medical treatment and beauty services, exposing women to
serious health risks.
The backlash against fillers is not confined to Iraq.
Internationally, public figures have begun speaking openly about reversing
cosmetic procedures. US model Blac Chyna has warned followers that fillers do
not enhance identity but gradually erase it.
In Iraq, this global shift coincides with a local awakening
shaped by regret, physical harm, and growing rejection of standardized beauty.
For Sarah, dissolving fillers marked more than a cosmetic
decision. It was an attempt to reclaim ownership over her face. “I believed
beauty was something I had to inject. Now I understand it was something I
already had.”
Read more: Self-acceptance vs. idealized images: Beauty in modern Iraq
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.
