The Weeknd's Plastic Surgery Face

Submission 33,226

Part of a series on The Weeknd. [View Related Entries]

About

The Weeknd's Plastic Surgery Face refers to the prosthetic mask worn by the recording artist Abel Tesfaye, also known as The Weeknd, in the music video for his song "Save Your Tears." A selfie of The Weeknd in those prosthetics inspired a series of reactions and memes.

Origin

On January 5th, 2020, the Weeknd published a selfie of himself with an enlarged face and jaw on Instagram. ^[1] The post received more than 3.2 million reactions in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

That day, he posted the music video for "Save Your Tears," in which he wears the prosthetic. The post received more than 8.3 million views in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Precursor

The Weeknd's AMA Bandages

At the 2020 American Music Awards, held November 22nd, 2020, The Weeknd appeared and performed in bandages as a way of promoting his album After Hours, which features his blood-splattered face on the cover (performance shown below).^[1] He won three AMAs for favorite male artist, favorite album and favorite song ("Heartless").

Spread

That day, the Instagram^[2] account for Prosthetic Renaissance Makeup-FX Studio shared early molds for the design. They wrote,"My original rough sculpture and separated appliances with textures. Consisting of 4 prosthetic appliances, main face being a collapsible mold." The post received more than 19,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

That day, people began reacting to images of the Weeknd. For example, Twitter ^[8] user @enctrl tweeted three images of The Weeknd with the caption, "this is very fascinating to me, the weeknd really told a story this era." The tweet received more than 8,700 likes and 1,400 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left). Many others compared his makeup to Handsome Squidward. Twitter^[9] user @UrbanNose2 tweeted, "The Weeknd really out here looking like combination of Dorian Tyrell of The Mask & handsome faced Squidward in his Save Your Tears video. & Its creepy as hell" (shown below, center). Twitter^[10] user @Ad3m___ tweeted, "The Weeknd out here looking like handsome Squidward." The tweet received more than 2,300 likes and 500 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Media Coverage

Several media outlets covered the makeup and the reaction, including The Cut,^[3] Launey Gossip,^[4] New York Post,^[5] CNN,^[6] The Independent^[7] and more.