All in the name of vanity
Cosmetic surgery hits mainstream, but health hazards are still at large
Jeffrey Dransfeldt
Issue date: 11/8/04 Section: Opinion
You and your friends just scored tickets to a VIP movie premiere and you can't wait to see all of your favorite celebs strut their stuff on the red carpet. As you gather into the theater for the big debut, you take your first face-to-face glance at some of the most beautiful people in Hollywood.
Ahh, yes - the glamour, the fame ... the freak show?
You stand by and see the horror of what money can really buy. Scantily clad sirens prance around looking like starving skeletal children in a Sally Struthers commercial, posing for the camera. Faces with skin stretched so tight you think a wrong quiver in a smile might spring release a tooth as shrapnel. On those faces are noses that appear to have fallen off with no replacement. Lips are so full of collagen you think they should be certified flotation devices among other body parts, and there has been enough liposuction to fill the Atlantic Ocean.
And you think to yourself, "Is this beauty or has Dr. Frankenstein somehow gone mainstream?"
Today's standards of beauty have gone to such extreme levels of body modification that people hardly resemble humans anymore. Plastic surgery has gone way, way ... way out of control, and it needs to stop now!
I'm sorry, but a 60-year-old female who is six feet tall, 90 pounds soaking wet with a size 32 A chest should not try to be a 21-year-old with a 36 DD
It's not like this is an overnight sensation. Archeologists have found evidence that physicians in ancient India utilized skin grafts as early as 800 B.C.
And I'm not saying that everyone who gets plastic surgery is wrong.
There are two different categories as defined by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, reconstructive and cosmetic: "Reconstructive surgery is performed on abnormal structures of the body, caused by congenital defects, developmental abnormalities, trauma, infection, tumors or disease. It is generally performed to improve functions, but may also be done to approximate a normal appearance ... Cosmetic surgery is performed to reshape normal structures of the body in order to improve the patient's appearance and self-esteem."
Ahh, yes - the glamour, the fame ... the freak show?
You stand by and see the horror of what money can really buy. Scantily clad sirens prance around looking like starving skeletal children in a Sally Struthers commercial, posing for the camera. Faces with skin stretched so tight you think a wrong quiver in a smile might spring release a tooth as shrapnel. On those faces are noses that appear to have fallen off with no replacement. Lips are so full of collagen you think they should be certified flotation devices among other body parts, and there has been enough liposuction to fill the Atlantic Ocean.
And you think to yourself, "Is this beauty or has Dr. Frankenstein somehow gone mainstream?"
Today's standards of beauty have gone to such extreme levels of body modification that people hardly resemble humans anymore. Plastic surgery has gone way, way ... way out of control, and it needs to stop now!
I'm sorry, but a 60-year-old female who is six feet tall, 90 pounds soaking wet with a size 32 A chest should not try to be a 21-year-old with a 36 DD
It's not like this is an overnight sensation. Archeologists have found evidence that physicians in ancient India utilized skin grafts as early as 800 B.C.
And I'm not saying that everyone who gets plastic surgery is wrong.
There are two different categories as defined by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, reconstructive and cosmetic: "Reconstructive surgery is performed on abnormal structures of the body, caused by congenital defects, developmental abnormalities, trauma, infection, tumors or disease. It is generally performed to improve functions, but may also be done to approximate a normal appearance ... Cosmetic surgery is performed to reshape normal structures of the body in order to improve the patient's appearance and self-esteem."