Plastic Surgery and Its Sociological Effects

Plastic surgery is also often called cosmetic surgery and has become a widespread method to reshape the body and to help to improve the appearance, it includes absolutely different operations starting with abdominoplasty and ending with eyes surgery and face lifting. Besides plastic surgery deals even more vitally important spheres, like for example repair damages caused by some accidents or injuries. It is well promoted and rather expensive but still carriers certain risks, like any other type of operation. For example, patients, who decide to make some dental operations, are put at great risks. People who go through a number of plastic operations are often still not satisfied with the result and start doing other procedures, which is of course not the best way to influence the state of the body: many people, who are overweight turn to special operations, but after the fat is gone they face the problem of lots of hanging skin.

Besides most people who have done it once, will return to these operations again and again, even with the same problem, as they feel constantly not satisfied with the result and are ready to give huge sums of money, which they by the way could have used for some better needs, like really supporting their health. ?Plastic surgery junkies need to think about why they keep wanting more work done. Obviously it?s much easier to change your outlook on life than it is to change your external look?? (Rosen Christine, The Democratization of Beauty, 2004, p.2). So this constant seeking for perfection can be considered more of a psychological problem than real problems with appearance. To avoid such result of plastic operations, the doctors are to provide sufficient amount of explanation for the potential patient concerning the results and reasons of this operation. Some may need just a psychological help instead of this operation. And this is of course a task of the society to work out the ?rules? for dealing the people, who want to make plastic surgery and do the best to defend the clients of the plastic surgery clinics.

All these is a good basis for the surgeons to build their businesses upon, they can use the week sides of a person , as almost every person feels not absolutely sure about his/her appearance and would love to look better, and earn good money. People are surrounded by advertisements of ?absolutely safe? and prestigious methods of changing the appearance. As any other branch of medicine, plastic surgery can have its field for development and application, but there are still certain rules or restrictions to be made about it. From the very beginning there should be a strict division between cases of application of plastic surgery, a person who was burnt or injured as a result of some accident or war or any other conflict has to make such kind of operation under the circumstances, even he doesn?t want to, and a person, who watches too much television and wants to get the same face Britney Spears or Tom Cruise have, chooses to make this operation on his own free will. It is absolutely not right to make these two people pay the same price for the plastic operation.

It was always believed that to live happily a man should be in a harmony with both physical and moral self, and in harmony with the surrounding world, social environment and conditions play great role for achieving this harmony. No wonder that all people struggle for meeting the accepted standards of beauty. Plastic surgery is thought to be a way to these standards, as this puts together both medical and aesthetical aspects, psychological balance and social well-being are thought to stand in close relation with beautiful appearance. Everybody would love to achieve social weight and meet the best standards of beauty. Age is not allowed to be an obstacle for ?being in a good form?, though nobody is getting younger as the time passes. This short phrase ?feel well? includes in reality the cooperation of biochemistry, psychology, medicine, endocrinology, dietology, dermatology and so on. No wonder that the fastest results, which are promised by plastic surgeons, are so temptating for people. There are many reasons that explain this obsessive preoccupation with beauty in modern world. Most of them appeal to such social factors like male domination over women or competition between women. Some psychoanalysts are even aware of cases when a small girl is envious about her mother?s nice appearance.

It is estimated that around 65 000 to 75 000 surgery operations are made each year only in the UK. Certainly women are constant customers at beauty shops and plastic surgeons. A man looking through a magazine with top models and beautiful women is getting pleasure, while a woman is feeling the more depressed the less she looks like those models. ?It is natural for a woman to participate in the act of comparison, even to the point of obsession. To be female is to be presented with an ideal and to measure your self and self-worth against it? (Society, Self ? Esteem, and Women, Ellie Cashman, p. 12). She is thinking of having longer legs, bigger breasts, blonde hair and even different color of skin as a way to deserve love and happiness, but ironically this ideal can never be fulfilled in reality. This beauty myth leads sometimes even to the situation, when a woman is ready to struggle for loosing some extra weight instead of struggling for some other life goal. Today they are doing their best to build their bodies by lifting weights and wrapping with seaweed, attending diet centers and doing other types of body exercises. But if a body can be turned for a better, the face, hair and the age results are the field for plastic clinics. Plastic surgery, for example gives empowering life experience for those women, who choose it, while hairstyling has become a way to claim to professional and social class identities.

There is one more tendency, which can not be considered acceptable, everybody is nowadays aware of so called Racial Beauty Battle, an example for it can be a story about plastic surgery boom in Asia, where people were trying to remake themselves to look more Caucasian. Some would of course deny this fact, but nobody can deny that the aesthetic ideal of Asia has changed greatly under the influence of Hollywood television. Asians ask the doctors to make their eyes wider, their noses longer and their breasts fuller, of course all these features are absolutely not typical for their race. Such kind of operations demand unique techniques and procedures, innovative operations, which are both a great deal of risk and should be considered ?steps against nature?, people were from the very beginning created different, everybody is individually different from others, all look differently, even twins are not absolute copies of each other as they have different characters, might happen that they have different tastes in clothes and absolutely different behavior. The same can be said about different nations, all differ from each other, all nations do not lack beautiful people, but it is never the reason for changing you appearance to look like somebody?s standard of beauty.

Overall, the development and researches of the plastic surgery are not to be stopped or hidden, unfortunately accidents happen to people all the time and they do and will need help from plastic surgeons, but this field of medicine should not and can not be ignored by society and some social laws and stable rules are to be worked out, as plastic surgery does influence the relations between people, the separate individuals and thus the society as a whole.

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