Background To date, the process of adaptation in the setting of aesthetic medicine has not been investigated. The combination of complex advanced feedback in the current intense social media milieu, in conjunction with easily accessible and effective aesthetic treatments, has produced pockets of overtreated patients and over-zealous practitioners. We examine whether aesthetic assessments of attractiveness and what appears natural can be distorted by the cognitive process of adaptation. Methods Forty-eight female participants were exposed to photographs of female faces in whom lip fullness had been strongly under- or over-exaggerated, while remaining within the bounds of natural appearing lips. Before and after evaluation of the exaggerated images, participants were asked to rate an alternative set of faces in terms of attractiveness (reflecting direct assessment of effective beauty impression) and naturalness (reflecting indirect assessment of beauty norms). The evaluation set consisted of six base faces that had been digitally altered to create a systematically varying 11 step set of lip sizes from extremely thin, to the original version, to very full. Results Second-order polynomial fits indicated clear shifts of the subjects’ facial aesthetic assessments towards the specific lip fullness of the adaptors. In contrast, such adaptions were not found for ratings of face naturalness. In contrast to research demonstrating mathematical foundations and unchanging rules governing perceptions of beauty, we show that simple viewing of exaggerated feature morphologies can rapidly result in recalibration of a person’s assessment of attractiveness. Conclusion This paper provides evidence that facial attractiveness is fluid, and that there are psychological mechanisms that cause an aesthetic bias. Over-exposure to exaggerated features can lead to significant changes to a person’s ideas of attractiveness.

Spectatorship is a core element of esports. Short for “electronic sports,” esports encompasses organized, professional competitive videogaming practices produced and consumed as a spectator sport. Esports’ computerized nature grants it a placeless quality, which creates ambiguities around what authentic esports spectatorship ought to be. Notably, some notions theorized prior to the emergence of contemporary esports imply that authenticity and placelessness are incompatible. We address this conundrum by presenting an ethnographic study conducted at an esports bar; a venue designed for the spectatorship of esports alongside other fans and alcohol consumption. While embodying seemingly placeless qualities, esports spectatorship nevertheless takes place in situated places. We found spectators at the bar worked to authenticate their spectatorship by drawing on conventions of legitimacy, professionalism, and spectacle from elsewhere, particularly spectator sports. Through their spectatorship, those at the bar constructed and affirmed a convention of authenticity for esports.

Previous work has established the existence and research interest of a “digital hinterland” (Rogerson, Gibbs & Smith, 2017) – online practices that support and frame people’s engagement with a hobby. In this paper, we extend the notion of the hinterland from digital-only practices to consider how online-gaming practices are framed by engagement in activities held in material spaces. Looking at the esports bar spectatorship experience, we describe how attendance substantiates and supports fans’ relationship with their fandom and with other fans. We draw on existing literature about esports experiences, practices of offline gaming hobbyists, and sports and media tourism, to show that shared time and place, attendance, and their contribution to an individual’s gaming capital (Consalvo, 2007; Walsh & Apperley, 2009) are important elements of this situated hinterland.

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