The Types of Cosmetic Surgery and How They Are Affected by Body Image
Studies have shown that, 14.6 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures were performed in 2012. “As cosmetic economic indicators such as auto, retail, and home sales saw gains in 2012 – so too did plastic surgery” (www.plasticsurgery.org). This statistic has proved that across the United States people are being affected with the opinion and views formed based off of Body Image. Throughout the years, the ideas of body image have changed based off of people’s personal desires on what they should look like or on “trend”. Women, children, and even men base their body image on what society believes is ideal. In some years, society might believe that a small waist and a thin frame might be the perfect body image. In others, the curvier frame would be the ideal body image. People have gone down the path of cosmetic surgery in order to meet their needs and desires for what they believe are the “perfect body”. The types of plastic surgery that are being performed correlate directly to the ideas of what body image is supposed to look like.
The use of plastic surgery date back to 2,000 B.C. where Egyptians and Indians would practice on warriors injured from battle in order to fix their wounded faces. “In India and Egypt, ancient physicians practiced some of the most rudimentary forms of plastic surgery” (Janelle). With the knowledge obtained from these early surgeries, early doctors began to use their practices
In today’s society, many people in this world come across either a body image or even some may even become obsessed. Obesity and body image has been a world problem all across the nation. Commonly in our society, people are contradicting the “ideal image” often times people are told that looks don’t matter- it’s only skin deep, but in our media to say something else otherwise our society promotes a certain body image as being seen as the only way to look and feel beautiful.
Photoshop has altered the way women see the “perfect” body. Too many women and girls wish to look like models that they see on television, magazines, or other media, rather than being happily content with the way they look themselves. The false and altered images often seen affect how females see beauty unrealistically. The more photoshopped images published, the more women and girls become insecure about their own appearances. Women’s insecurities have led to the spending of millions of dollars each year on the unnecessary plastic surgeries to achieve the “perfect” look. Many insecurities have also led to anorexic and bulimic bodies. When describing the look they wish to achieve, it is common for someone to show a plastic surgeon a photo of
This new trend of cosmetic surgery is also a factor in presenting an unrealistic body image to the public. Predominantly used by celebrities and those of wealth, now cosmetic surgery is progressively being used by the average middle class person. Men are just as affected by the
In recent decades, Western society have replaced these practices with strict diets and perhaps even more remarkably, cosmetic plastic surgery. The 1990s saw a significant increase in the numbers of women receiving cosmetic surgery in Britain and the United States, especially liposuction and breast augmentation procedures and today more and more women are turning to cosmetic surgery to change the shape and appearance of their bodies (Grogan: 1999: p.49). Whilst plastic surgery is not a recent phenomenon, with a history tracing back to 1000 BC, where
Modern popular media has a significant impact on defining cultural norms in our society. The rise of smart phones and other personal devices means that we are inundated with images on an ongoing basis. So many of these images represent women in an ideal form that is unattainable form most individuals. Cosmetic surgery, along with image enhancing techniques, are used to erase imperfections, sculpt he body into a more desirable shape and erase signs of the aging process in so many of the images that we see on a daily basis. This inundation has led to our society and me personally have a more accepting view on cosmetic surgery.
What would we change about our bodies if we could? Our face, our thighs, or our hips? What about our eyes or our lips? Would we change everything? If given the chance, more than sixty percent of people would endure cosmetic surgery in the hopes of achieving their “ideal” form, according to a survey conducted by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. In our nation, society has taken full control over body image. Not just any body image, though, our body image. Recently, bodies have been the favorite subject of our culture. These bodies are plastered to every major advertisement, the ones paraded down runways, and cast for the lead in television. These are the bodies that diet and exercise articles say you can have for the time, effort, and patience. These are the bodies surgeons say can happen with a lump sum and a few weeks of recovery. These ideal bodies have plagued our nation in a way that nothing else has. These are the bodies that sixty percent of people dream of having, but don’t. Bodies are becoming the number one priority in our life, but at what cost?
Marketing campaigns have been structured to encourage cosmetic surgeries in ways that attempt to generate demands. For example since 1983 in the USA, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (ASPRS) has attempted to expand its services of cosmetic surgery through a marketing campaign of press release that showed pre and post operative pictures as well as educational brochures (Gillespie 1997, p.76). In addition to that since costumers don't decide to undergo surgical procedure over night, providers need to keep a high profile by increasing advertisements and awareness through women magazines, local news papers and other types of communication (Gillespie 1997, p.76). Cosmetic surgery, which aims to improve individual’s body physique, encourages women to see imperfections as illness (Gillespie 1997, p.74). This form of ideals, that embraces only certain types of female bodies as normal and feminine in accordance to size, weight, shape and often color of the body, ignores natural diversity of women. The normalization of cosmetic surgery not only supports the capitalist system and enforces gender norms into society but also transforms normal body parts and the changes the natural process of aging into abnormal. For example nowadays it is very common to hear someone saying that an individual is ugly or fat and therefore needs to undergo plastic surgery; or questions why someone who is so wealthy would not pay for cosmetic surgery to fix certain parts of their body, which are considerate to be unattractive or abnormal according to the cultural norms. Consequently, the more people select to have cosmetic surgery procedures to create a beautiful face and body, the more ordinary looking individuals will become to be perceived and evaluated as ugly (Morgan 1991,
Plastic Surgery has become a worldwide epidemic in today’s world. The number of plastic surgeries continues to increase since 2010. In today’s day and age, plastic surgery is one of the most popular and requested procedures. Females are opting to have plastic surgery because they dislike their body image. Society has impacted many people by brain washing them to believe that a person’s body has to be perfect. In order for one to be considered beautiful, television and media influence people’s perceptions of beauty.
The first “nose job” was performed around 2,600 years ago in India. It was performed by a man named Sushruta. Sushruta was a surgeon from India who wrote the first treatise (a piece of writing that deals properly and methodically with a topic), on the basic principles of surgery. This treatise has been translated and passed all over the world leading to many new discoveries in the surgical world. Many of these discoveries from the treatise deal with plastic surgery, mainly nasal reconstructions, or some might call them “nose jobs.” The medical knowledge dealing with plastic surgery from India (circa 600 B.C.), has had a large impact on what plastic surgery is nowadays.
The public is becoming more accustomed to the idea of plastic surgery; and number of patients seeking plastic surgery has increased in the past decade. Each year the American society is stimulated with thousands of prototype images. This reality affects countless people with low self-steam and fills the brain of men and women with lack of confidence about their body images. Plastic surgery seems to be a comfortable resolution to this issue, but actually it’s just the beginning of a more complex matter related to body images. The public is becoming more and more accustomed to the idea of plastic surgery.
“Be who you are not who the world wants you to be” (Unknown). Society constantly uses the phrase “Be yourself”, however at the same time indicates beauty standards such as body type; tall, skinny, incredibly tiny waist, light skin, the list seems everlasting. Cosmetic surgery, the surgical process of changing one’s physical appearance for cosmetic reasons, has become the solution for thousand of men and women seeking to reach society’s expectations. Nearly sixteen million cosmetic surgeries, most commonly known as plastic surgery, performed in 2016 in the U.S, claiming to help patient with their self-esteem and overall improvement to their future. Changing by the aspects of others and becoming someone else should not have a place in the twenty-first century, the danger, cost and personal impact of the rigorous medical procedures seem unacceptable. Having a low self-esteem and struggling with the different social beliefs of beauty aspects have other solutions rather than plastic surgery.
There are many reasons why someone may want to change his or her physical appearance, and many of these reasons are out of people 's control. Cosmetic practices and plastic surgery have become more pervasive in modern day society. Plastic surgery is defined as any cosmetic procedure that allows one to reconstruct his or her physical appearance. Although plastic surgery has some benefits, such as the ability to reconstruct genetic deformities that one has no control over, many of the people who undergo plastic surgery do it for non-essential reasons. Plastic surgery can authentic an individual 's goals for beauty if it is necessary, and as long as the individual has higher self-confidence and a higher sense of self. Though this is typically not the case, many of these reasons range from different media and cultural along with societal influences, to an insufficient sense of self, and paired with certain psychological disorders. They opt in favor of cosmetic procedures for a variety of different reasons, characteristically not the right ones, which leaves room for different risks and drawbacks.
“I'd rather look younger and feel happy than look older and be depressed” said The Queen of Comedy Joan Rivers. Now a day’s people feel this way about plastic surgery. They would go under knives, hours of surgery and thousands of complication just to look pretty. Every year millions of people go through complicated plastic surgery, and this number is increasing every year. The major reason of this increscent is people want to change their physic to look pretty. Fake beauty or plastic surgery is an obsession this generation in spite of knowing the side effect to bring variation.
Cosmetic surgery has a surprisingly history many people are not aware of. For example, the first breast implants actually included beeswax, vegetable oil and paraffin. Dr. Varaztad Kazanjian known as “Founding Father” of the modern plastic surgery during the
The definition of beauty is vague because beauty itself is a quite subjective matter. A certain features may be considered as beautiful to some, but not to others. It comes to a conclusion that beauty is defined by the society an individual belongs to. With the help of the mass media, a number of computer edited images are presented to the public, and these images are often promoted as “beautiful.” Many people seek to alter their appearances through surgeries, and some even become obsessed with the thought of beauty that they go through numerous surgeries in attempt to achieve the “perfect look.” These obsessive thoughts with regards to beauty can be explained through the interactionist perspective, in which shared meanings are established through the social interactions between individuals within a society. Beauty is no longer a personal matter, indeed it has become a form of judgment by other people. Every day, people are judged by their appearances, which trigger the idea of altering the look and body to fulfill what other people consider as beauty. In fact, plastic surgery provides the perfect chance for individuals, who are not satisfied with their appearance, to make a change. Yet, it is a controversial topic because plastic surgery falls in a grey zone between necessity for victims of injuries and diseases and a cosmetic tool for those who simply do it to enhance their appearance. Plastic surgery has three major disadvantages: the medical risks, addiction, and