Cosmetic surgery has already recovered from the recession and, demonstrating an enviable elasticity, is on the rise again. Last year, the number of people undergoing procedures from eyelid surgery to liposuction went through the 50,000 mark for the first time in the UK. Women made up 90% of this number, the highest total ever recorded.

You may think that the PIP scandal would have dampened the figures in the chest area at least, but in fact it appears to have had the opposite effect. According to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, there was a 13% increase in the number of breast augmentations. Some, perhaps, were having corrective PIP-related works. Witness the breast-size allusions – “the sector proved impossible to deflate for long, with breast surgery up just two years after the [PIP] crisis by a whopping 13%” – in the press release from BAAPS (an unintentional acronym, one presumes). So why are such growing numbers of people choosing cosmetic surgery?

This week’s figures took even Rajiv Grover, a consultant plastic surgeon and president of BAAPS, by surprise. After all, there had been “quite stagnant growth for the preceding four or five years since the recession. But when you look at other reports about growth – in house prices and GDP – [the new figures] fall in with that,” he says. Historians of costume have long linked the economy and hemlines, but perhaps they should have looked at augmented cup sizes, too. For Grover believes that the statistics for cosmetic surgery provide a reliable “economic yardstick for recovery – because some of these procedures affect young people, and others affect much older people. You are getting the whole cross-section of the population, and the figures come from across the UK.”

Perhaps Grover’s figures are not so surprising. Despite a woeful economy in recent years, plenty of people still have money to spend. And since women and men are living longer, and experiencing middle age later, it seems perfectly reasonable that many would note a disjuncture between their inner and outer selves and wish to correct it. Or that young people, seeing all around them images of apparently better-looking, better-bodied celebrities should wish to override nature with a more manufactured and socially recognisable face. (A desire that can be witnessed at the level of makeup too.) On top of all that, cosmetic surgery simply seems less of a taboo now.

“What we have seen over the last 10 to 15 years is growing acceptance,” says Grover. “That has come from greater exposure in the media, on the internet, and from certain celebrities who have admitted to having had cosmetic surgery and who look reasonable. I don’t think we can ever put that genie back in the bottle.” Are people in Britain less inclined to disapprove of surgery now? There is only one way to find out, and that is to ask as many as possible. Luckily, it’s a sunny day and the streets around the Guardian’s London offices are busy.

Romana Amato is 21 and says she sees cosmetic surgery as “neither taboo nor not taboo. People shouldn’t judge other people for wanting to do it. When people start going, ‘Ugh! Why do people want to do this?’, I just think, ‘Well then, don’t do it yourself.’” She knows one person who has had cosmetic surgery – a breast augmentation – and says it made her friend “much more confident”. Would she ever choose surgery herself? There is a long pause, and although she eventually says, “I don’t think I would,” her thoughtfulness itself reveals what may be a societal inclination not to rule it out, or at the very least not to disapprove.

When I ask Dominic Joseph, 20, and Mark Wilson, 17, both apprentices for a construction company, if they are surprised by the latest figures, Joseph shrugs, his first response entirely one of economic practicality. “If they’ve got the money, they can do whatever they want.” They both consider surgery “common”, by which they mean familiar rather than downmarket, although as Grover points out, even Monday’s statistics show that “if we look at the percentage of people having [surgery] as a total of the population, it is less than 1%.”

The next person I stop is Tessa Woodward, who gives her age as “nearly 71”, and who is a compelling advert for the Oil of Olay she uses. She lives in Rochester in Kent, and is in London for the day with her camera club. Not only is she unsurprised by the BAAPS figures, but she says she would not be surprised if one of her children underwent cosmetic surgery. Woodward says she would not choose cosmetic surgery herself “possibly because of my age. But I might have done if it had been more easily available when I was younger.”

Many procedures are now easily available, albeit at a price. Breast implants cost £4,000 to £5,000 on average. Eyelid surgery can cost £2,000 to £3,000. As Grover points out, recovery times, size of scars and anaesthetic have all been improved enough to make surgery seem more compelling to interested parties. But, he says, “I don’t think surgery will ever become commonplace, where the normal face is the operated face.” He thinks non-surgical procedures such as Botox are more likely to dominate. He cites the US, where over “the last six or seven years there has been a 150% increase in surgery. For the same period the increase in cosmetic nonsurgical treatments is between 700 and 800%.”

But surely the popularity of non-surgical procedures will, in turn, make surgical interventions seem less far-fetched? After all, even common skincare is packaged to look clinical. I can’t be the only person who buys a daily skincare product because it sounds scientific, and sufficiently like “dermabrasion” that I believe I may achieve intervention-level improvements simply by rubbing foaming stuff on my cheeks. Perhaps every step of this kind brings non-invasive and then surgical procedures closer to all of us. And, despite what the president of BAAPS says, perhaps one day the uncommonplace face will be the one that looks unworked-upon, and a thoroughly wrinkled face or sagging breasts will look not just old, but old-fashioned.

• This article was amended on 26 November 2019 to remove some personal information.