Yes, suggesting that in order to go to the supermarket to buy food I should undergo a tremendous amount of plastic surgery, and that is an alternative to wearing Graucho Marx glasses with a plastic nose and mustache attached, is most certainly a joke.
Little Brother recommends it multiple times.
As for the effectiveness–it’s good enough, these systems aren’t a SU or such nor can they correlate a slightly limping person to a no-limp person.
Bigger attack vectors are what you wear, modern AI surveillance looks at your overall description to correlate you with other sightings.
Descriptors such as your skin tone, height, sex, hair type/colour, shoes, hat type, glasses, overall apparel, and other paraphernalia also generate a fingerprint.