My opinions have changed since I was sixteen about a lot of things. And plastic surgery has been one thing that I've had many changing and developing opinions about. Currently, my opinion on plastic surgery is that if someone was born with something that affects their ability to do normal everyday tasks, if someone is having a sex reassignment surgery, if they were in a bad accident and need to reconstruct their face or something along those lines then it's perfectly okay.
But what gets me and confuses me is when someone does it for cosmetic reasons only. To make them feel better about their body, aging, whatever it is. This one girl who I'm friends with lost about one hundred pounds and now her breasts aren't what they used to look like because, well, she lost one hundred pounds. Once she referred to them as looking like popped balloons. And as a fellow young woman in a world that tells us constantly what it is socially acceptable to look like, I understand her being self conscious about her breasts and body in general. But also, as a young women is it okay to show young girls who are growing up in a harsh critical society that if you don't like something about your body you can just pay some old white dude a bunch of money to go cut you up and "fix" yourself?
Heidi Montag, an actor from The Hills has gone through about twelve plastic surgeries. In my opinion I thought that Heidi was a very naturally beautiful woman before she got anything done. But something made her decide that she wasn't attractive enough. According to her surgeon many of these procedures were little "tweaks". Now, if they are just little "tweaks", are they really necessary? Does having your eyebrows raised about a quarter of an inch or less really that important in the whole grand scheme of things? I think not.
I think what really bothers me about all the work she got done is that it is really sending the wrong message. And it isn't just her. Obviously. Everywhere young girls are seeing advertisements telling them that they have to change, that they have to buy this product to look beautiful, buy this bra to have bigger boobs, wear these clothes to look slimmer. The message that your body is beautiful is not out there. We aren't told that we don't need to wear makeup to look good, we aren't told to love our body, just that we should spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery to tweak things. Also, if ageing is bad, why does Heidi have white hair?
ReplyDeleteI love the end comment you just made Gwen. That's a good point to bring up. I feel truly bad for all of the young women in todays society because of how they are told to look. When people see any women that is shown in the media they are supposed to think.."oh I want to look like her, no I want to be her". This society doesn't even show what the women really look like unless they are making fun of a celebrity. 90 percent of the time, women are altered through photoshop through people's computers. Even in today's society to each and every one of the people with an instagram or a facebook, they are even able to edit their pictures in order to make themselves look better. They have to think to themselves "what do others think is acceptable?". Of course every young woman wants to be pretty so they think that they need all of this unnecessary cosmetic surgery because it either makes them look "more feminine" or what society thinks is better. Why not just go for a natural look? Almost all of my guy friends that I know of would say that a girl is prettier when everything about her is natural. I understand what you said Merrill about plastic surgery for health reasons or for a sex change but I never understood the fantasy in having a boob job or anything involving cosmetic surgery. We should teach people to be accepting of themselves, not to change something because it is a disliked feature. Thinking back to the episode of Extreme Makeover we watched in class, makes me want to just bop those people on the back of their head. The lady wanted to look more feminine so she tweaked her facial features. I'm sorry, but personally she looked like the same person. Yes she was wearing a dress, high heels, makeup and had a new hair style, but did she really need to change the way her face looked? She could've just put on new clothes, make-up, and gotten a new hairstyle to look more feminine. People need to realize the possible affects that plastic surgery can have on us mentally and physically.
ReplyDeleteI think that it would be my mother's willingness to help me change myself rather than accept myself as a young women what would have saddened me. Later- had I looked into my children's faces once they were born and seen that nose knowing that I didn't think it was good enough for my own face what message would I be sending to them?
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