Mimi Keene surgery – news flash: faces change during puberty

The hotly anticipated third series of Netflix’s Sex Education dropped last week, and with it came a new stand out star: enter, Mimi Keene, who plays bad gal gone good Ruby Matthews on the show.

And aside from her jaw-dropping wardrobe, Mimi has been drawing search traffic for another, more predictable reason; yep, Mimi Keene surgery is trending.

We see it every time a new face hits our screens, as viewers try to discern if their beauty is “real” or “fake”. But Mimi was already a well-known face before she hit Moordale High, starring as EastEnders’ Cindy Williams from 2013 – 2015.

There’s no doubt that Mimi is one of the biggest stars to come from the third series of Sex Education: she’s made the cover of the Autunm/Fall 2021 Wonderland magazine (while her co-stars merely feature inside) and with the success of the show across the pond, she’s sure to have a career for years to come.

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But like many before her, searches for Mimi haven’t been around her impressive career but on the work she may or may not have done. But here’s the thing: comparing Mimi’s 24-year-old face with the one she had as a literal child during her time on EastEnders is just a bit mad, isn’t it?

Mimi took the role of Cindy Williams when she was just 15 years old, and there’s a pretty big change that happens to people around that time – it’s called puberty. And as well as biological changes to our reproductive systems, it causes changes in bone structure, with the face becoming longer and more angular, with the cavities inside the face becoming larger (which is why even women’s voices drop a few pitches as they pass adolescence).

And let's also not forget that make-up exists. Besides - does she even actually look any different?

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We saw it with Kylie Jenner, too. While she did admit in later years to having filler in her lips, a lot of the scrutiny directed at her changing face between the ages of 13 and 19 could have easily been blamed on the effects of puberty. I certainly don’t look the way I did in my early teens, and can categorically say I’ve not had any surgical intervention on my face.

But quite aside from that, can we please stop obsessing over the way our female TV stars look? The men on these shows get nowhere near the level of criticism – even the ones on Love Island, whose bodies aesthetic obsession are on display as much as the women, aren’t primarily viewed as decorative, with the search traffic reflecting this. Mimi is an accomplished actor with a leading role in one of the biggest TV shows of the last year – she’s much more than a pretty face.