The opinion piece (see link below) was in an American newspaper about unnecessary plastic surgery and how the skills of these doctors would be put to better humanitarian use in places like Ghana that have a dire need for corrective surgeons. This is from the author’s response to criticism from a couple unimpressed docs:
It is disappointing to see doctors promoting plastic surgery as a way for woman and men to increase their self esteem. This is especially true in the case of women, as there is already an undue emphasis in America on valuing women by their looks and body shape. My article discussed the use of cosmetic surgery by both men and women. The Drs. letter makes it sound like I was attacking only women who go for plastic surgery. I wasn’t. The fact that more women go for plastic surgery than men, doesn’t say as much about those women as it does about the way our society views women. Women should not be viewed as objects. Fox and Schingo apparently think they should.
And that my dear physicians is a Victorian attitude!!
It’s one thing to wax your eyebrows into a different shape. It’s a whole other thing to get your entire face reshaped because you don’t like the bridge of your nose, your pointy chin, and think even your cheekbones need some shaving off.
Don’t even get me started on Jocelyn Wildenstein. All the money she’s got and she paid people to do that to her? Money talks but sometimes it sounds like a bad case of aphasia. Cost to look that hideous: $4,000,000 (according to the video). But she likes it. Who am I to be appalled?
I wonder how many people are aware of racial plastic surgery. I can’t find the site now but there was before/after photography of several actresses that had resorted to surgery to alter their appearance to the point of hiding their ethnicity. I’d heard of skin bleaching before but this…yikes. But it’s not just for celebrities hoping to make a better buck by looking All-American. Ordinary people, many of them of Asian descent, have considered doing this.
I can’t help but find that there’s an inherent complex attached to altering one’s facial features — especially for an Asian-American. After all, I have never heard of someone who goes under the knife to have a double-eyelid reversal surgery or his classic roman nose flattened.
For a long time plastic surgeons worked with the Anglo-Saxon ideal of beauty, and medical schools a few decades ago did not acknowledge racial distinctions when it came to plastic surgery. A classic Roman nose was standard, and so was a double eyelid. Going under the knife in the name of beauty was, for a long time, a move toward having a Caucasian face.
Indeed, Asia’s relationship with the West has been traditionally schizophrenic and contradictory when it comes to self-image. Vietnamese children of mixed parentage born of American GIs during the war, for instance, were a permanent under class, and their conditions worsened after the war ended. Perceived as children of the enemy, they were often derided, chastised and beaten. But these days those mixed children’s features are coveted by many wealthy people in Saigon and Hanoi. They want their noses, eyes, lips, and would save a fortune to go under the knife to look like them.
If it wasn’t for my complete and total aversion to pain and surgery in general, I would perhaps consider saving up for something like liposuction. Suck out those pesky fat cells and start anew. But then I’d have also to be hypnotized into believing I’m deathly allergic to potato chips and fries.
I think more effort should be put into body acceptance rather than that elusive self-esteem. It’s hard for young girls to feel good about their bodies when they don’t see anyone in movies or tv that have pudgy faces or mousy hair. Nobody’s short and chunky and girls are only seen wearing glasses if we’re all supposed to pretend she’s the ugly duckling that will soon get a makeover by the sexy blonde stiletto bimbo.
Older women won’t feel any better about themselves either when the only curvy stars are the ones getting mocked on every magazine cover. And that brouhaha over Lizzie Miller? How does that chick even qualify as plus sized? And I love how the article’s automatic ad stuff has nothing to do with the story and yet says everything Miller is trying to make a stand against:
I don’t think we can win.
