For many, the bikini season means one thing: anxiety over what can be done about a body that has surreptitiously expanded under a winter wardrobe of thick sweaters and black tights. This is also a season for fashion magazines to publish all the new plastic surgery developments for those unsatisfied with their bodies. Diets and rigorous exercise are the mainstream options. But for those with several thousand dollars to spend, plastic surgery can mean body morphing without the effort.
It used to be that if you didn’t like your body, you went on a diet, and if you didn’t like your face you put on make-up. Not any more. Today, an enormous industry stands ready to suck the fat from you thighs, create breasts to fit your fantasies, move your brows, enlarge your lips, iron your wrinkles, and reverse the forces of gravity. Gradually more and more people are opting for cosmetic surgery. According to the American Society of Plastic Reconstructive Surgery, in 1994 some 393,049 Americans had some aesthetic defect, real or imagined, surgically fixed. Of those 393,049 Americans, a large percentage was male.
According to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, “more than 7,000 U. S. males had facelifts last year, and that’s in addition to the more than 2,100 laser resurfacing and close to 130,000 eyelifts” (Wood 84). One stimulus for both male and female plastic surgery operations is the intense competition in the business world. There is often a perception, correct or not, that an older person is less up to date and efficient.
In an effort to remain young-looking, many men and women have turned to cosmetic surgery. Thus, the increasing number especially, in male plastic surgery operations demonstrates the greater acceptance in society of plastic surgery. What plastic surgeons tend to call “aesthetic” surgery and rival specialists refer to as “cosmetic” surgery, has broken through technological, medical, and economical barriers to revolutionize expectations for the human body. In general, a plastic surgeon’s work falls into two broad categories, functional repair and aesthetic repair (Camp 8). Functional repair fixes human organs that don’t work. The problem may be congenital; the patient was born with the problem, or may have been acquired in war, by accident, through other forms of violence, or from a disease.
Breast reconstruction after cancer falls into this category. Burn repairs, which attempt to cover open wounds with new skin, are also in this category. Aesthetic repair attempts to improve appearance that might otherwise fall near the limits of the normal range. Rhinoplasties, facelifts, tummy tucks, breast enhancements, and breast reductions “Maybe fashion models or movie stars could justify their face lifts on professional grounds, but for the rest of us, it was just vanity, self-indulgence, and a crime against nature” (Kazanjian 250). Kazanjian makes a very good point when she says that for the rest of us plastic surgery would be nothing more than a “crime against nature.
” The “crime” being the cutting, sucking, and slicing of the human body. Instead of the human body being revered, it is cut and sliced in order for an image conscience society to accept it. The problem then becomes, at the outset of plastic surgery, how much to alter. Most of us would not alter anything, yet some change everything about themselves. For instance, one woman in her sixties recently had her face lifted, fat removed from her eyelids, a chin implant, and a nose correction. What most plastic surgery patients don’t know is that cosmetic surgery is not a stable solution to the aging process.
Most surgeons, while they are proud of their results, concede that they are not permanent, and the periodic and costly “tune-ups” are called for, “One in five aesthetic surgery patients in 1994 was a repeat patient” (Wood 84). That’s a lot of money, considering the price range for plastic surgery is between $1,500 to $6,400, none of which is covered by insurance. The motivation for cosmetic surgery most often cited by women is that they want clothes to fit right. Indeed the demand for cosmetic surgery is highest in those areas that also are given to a greater preoccupation with .
