Images produced by the media will make people do almost anything to fit American standards of the perfect body. Plastic surgery offers a quick fix to help achieve this goal but no matter how much surgery nothing is perfect. Images produced by media, quick fixes and the outcome of the fixes are problems that woman of all ages deal with. From the time of birth, images of physical perfection bombard young minds.
When children are young their minds are fragile and mold to what they are taught. One of the first toys a young girl is given is a Barbie doll Girls are shown Barbie and parents tell the children that Barbie dolls are beautiful. So young girls are taught that Barbie is what a perfect female is. Eventually when the girls reach middle school they find Barbie what they still want to physically achieve but find talking about Barbie childish.
So they turn to more life size Barbie dolls like Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child. Teenage girls, who consider themselves individuals, all strive for the same goal to become what the opposite sex is attracted to. Teenage girls want to dress and look like young celebrities so they wear tons of makeup and dress in clothing that would have their great grandparents turning in their graves. Schools all over the country are taking the parents job by changing the dress code so that girls do not wear clothing that show their mid drifts and bare shoulders.
Even when girls enter college they are still effected by images of models and actresses that are considered perfection. Furthermore when woman have children they repeat the circle by giving their little girls childhood toys that they enjoyed such as Barbie dolls. Many feel that self-esteem is something that only teenagers worry about but self-esteem is something that has to constantly be taken care of. When people feel bad about themselves they just are not happy.
Moreover when women become older age begins to take its toll. Although some woman view laugh lines and wrinkles as a rite of passage most view wrinkles has a sign of getting older and weaker. So instead of letting nature run its course woman all over North America run to the doctors for major surgery. A face-lift is the most common plastic surgery among older woman.
A face-lift is when a doctor makes an incision along the hairline and pulls back on the skin and make it tighter. Thus making a woman appear twenty years younger. Many older women go to this procedure as a fix to make them feel younger and raise their self-esteem. Plastic surgery is not something that just older women turn to woman of all ages in there twenties and thirties also go to plastic surgery for a self-esteem boost. Younger women turn to surgeries like nose jobs, breast implants, buttox implants, cheek implants, collagen implants and liposuction to help make they feel better. Women want to feel more attractive to men so they try to become the unachievable, the Barbie.
The perfect Barbie doll-image that woman of all ages strives for. Most people do not view surgery as a major process; they see surgery as a quick way to become America’s view of a perfect woman. Many women do not want to wait for years or want to spend time to keep up with their physical appearance. Dieting and exercise is the healthiest way to achieve a perfect or ideal body but the American way of life wants everything quick. Also as Alex Witchel says, in her essay A Model Figure at Size 14, “‘The diet industry is a $33-billion-a-year business with a 98 percent failure rate.
” who really would want to spend that much time and money and not see any results. Self-esteem takes time to build but the American way of life makes women feel that they have to keep up an ideal body image. Thus many people who get these surgeries think that they only have to worry about a week of recovery and then they can move on but the outcomes are not always as perfect as society would like them to be. Plastic surgeries can have .
