Cosmetic Surgery Pros and Cons

Cosmetic Surgery Pros and Cons Cosmetic surgery has gone mainstream. Once upon a time, it was an almost taboo topic of discussion in polite circles. Of course, there were whispers here and there in the neighborhood that your fifty-something neighbor had a facelift ("she's looking fantastic, after all, 10 years younger," "you know she must have had some work done"). You heard the rumors at school that the head cheerleader had gotten a nose job for her 16th birthday ("it's so much smaller!").

You even suspected that your aunt had gotten your awkward cousin's ears pinned back. But no one ever openly talked about these things. One day, someone you had know for years just suddenly turned up looking different in some way usually after a lengthy, unexplained absence. Everyone knew it was cosmetic surgery, but pretended either to not notice the change or to believe it was due to taking all the right vitamins. Cosmetic surgery was a not-so-secret secret.

That was how things were 20 years ago, when cosmetic surgery was just starting to become a major medical business. Things are not like that today. Now, people openly discuss the cosmetic work they have had done, and are proud of it. Young women are eager to show off their breast enhancements, older women compare notes on surgeons who have performed their face lifts.

Botox parties, where women gather for drinks, appetizers, and injections of Botox to smooth the lines on their faces, are all the rage among the soccer mom set, and young college co-eds are getting together for collagen injections in their lips and chemical peels for their complexions. A recent television reality program, "The Swan" even made cosmetic surgery a prize to be won. Cosmetic surgery is undeniably part of the popular cultural lexicon now. People want it.

But should they have it? What are the pros and cons of cosmetic surgery? The most obvious benefit of cosmetic surgery is enhanced self-esteem. With all of the media images of rail-think waifs of women with large breasts and full lips, to the dazzling smiles of male media personalities with snow-white, perfectly straight teeth, our modern society is bombarded daily with images of what we are being told to think of as the perfect body type.

We rarely see images of average-looking, or even pretty but not quite beautiful people in the media, at least not portrayed in a positive light. Among human beings, there is a natural desire to fit in with the ideal, to think of ourselves as beautiful and to be thought of that way by others. To be beautiful, the media seems to say, is to be acceptable.

This constant call to physical perfection can be very hard on a person's self-esteem, especially when no one is told that these so-called images of perfection are largely airbrushed, touched-up creations made by an artist, and are only stylized images of the people they are supposed to represent. Still, the challenge to be perfect is out there, and many people feel physically inadequate as a result. This has a profound negative impact on the self-esteem of many individuals.

From the woman who thinks men won't like her because of her small breasts, to the older woman trying to fight off aging in a culture obsessed with youth to the young man who purposefully has his jaw broken and re-set in order to gain that perfect set of teeth, cosmetic surgery becomes an answer to their own personal dissatisfaction with their bodies. The results of cosmetic surgery on a person's self-esteem can be quite dramatic.

A person who previously had been quiet and a loner because of their poor body-image can suddenly become quite the social butterfly after a successful round of cosmetic surgery. Generally, the more dramatic the surgery, the more dramatic the post-operative results. Gastric bypass surgery and liposuction can transform an obese person overnight into the lean, lithe person they always imagined they could be. Silicone implants can enhance everything from breasts to buttocks to chins, reshaping them and making them more sculpted.

But even smaller procedures that can be done in a doctor's office under local anesthetic can have positive effects on a person's self-esteem. Someone who gets his teeth straightened and whitened, gets Botox or collagen injections, or even just a mole removed often feels dramatically more attractive afterward, even if the visible results of a procedure are only faint. And this feeling of increased attractiveness translates into increased confidence and happiness in nearly every aspect of a person's life, at least for a while (Crampton, 23).

The potential positive effect of cosmetic surgery on a person's self-esteem is so great, in fact, that cosmetic surgeons often view themselves as healers of not only "physical defects," but of emotional desperation (Blum, 74). The cosmetic surgeons view their function as repairing psychological damage through physical surgery; even if the body is otherwise healthy, the self-esteem can be surgically corrected.

In fact, in some countries with state-funded health insurance, such as Great Britain and The Netherlands, cosmetic surgery can be paid for by the state if a psychologist deems it necessary for the person's emotional well-being. The Netherlands even goes so far as to have a clinical guideline of when cosmetic surgery may be indicated.

For example, a woman would be considered for a state-funded face-lift, a person would need to look 10 years older than his or her chronological age; for a breast augmentation or liposuction, a person would need a difference of four clothing sizes between their top and bottom.

While some of the changes cosmetic surgery brings could certainly be accomplished through diet, exercise, and plenty of sleep, the fast-paced lifestyle of today's world and the "want it now" attitude that this culture promotes often leads to the view of cosmetic surgeons as something of magicians.

Why wait weeks or months to get the result you want, if you can get it at all, when a little trip under the knife can fix it all instantly? Or, in some cases, an undesirable feature is genetic, and no amount of diet and exercise is going to change it. That is where the cosmetic surgeon comes in, to fix what some view as nature's mistakes (Gimlin, 89).

Certainly, as has been shown, there are psychological advantages to this, but what about the psychological drawbacks, and even the inherent risks involved in cosmetic surgery? While cosmetic surgery can lift a person's spirits, it can also make them feel guilty for not being able to change their bodies on their own. Plus, cosmetic surgery is invasive, it is, in fact, the ultimate invasive procedure available to conform to popular standards of beauty.

Because of this, it is impossible for some people to not feel violated in some fundamental way after a cosmetic procedure. A sense of separation from the self can occur after a cosmetic procedure, a sense that you are your body and yet not your body at the same time, that can be permanent.

While the outward results may look good, the inner turmoil created by this dichotomous state of mind can last a lifetime, a lifetime of always feeling slightly inadequate or that something isn't quite right with the sense of self. A person can also use cosmetic surgery for all the wrong reasons, especially if that person has other underlying psychological issues beyond low self-esteem.

For example, both men and women have been known to use plastic surgery to attract and/or retain a mate, though this behavior is more common in women (Davis, 15). A woman with attachment or abandonment issues with a mate who tells her that her breasts are too small or her nose is too big may go to the extreme of surgically transforming herself in an attempt to hold on to the mate. After all, she reasons, if she is physically pleasing to him, then he will not leave her.

That this is a false notion never occurs to her, and when he later leaves her, despite her cosmetic enhancements, her self-esteem is crushed as she wonders why she was not good enough for him. And it is likely that she never considered that cosmetic surgery can only do so much; it can not erase all the tiny imperfections that make us human, something the surgeon likely did not tell her beforehand (Lewis, 9).

Not only does a person put their psychological well-being at risk when undergoing cosmetic surgery to please another person, they also put themselves at physical risk. Every year, there are botched cosmetic surgeries. Some of them simply leave the patient looking worse than he or she felt they did before. Others actually cause physical harm, sometimes permanent, such as in the well-publicized cases of silicone breast implants that have made their recipients physically sick (Smith, 40). In worst-case scenarios, the patient can even be killed by a cosmetic surgery procedure.

Any patient who undergoes cosmetic surgery puts themselves at some sort of physical risk, whether they acknowledge this or not. Even in-office procedures like Botox and collagen injections can cause allergic reactions or injection-site infections in some people. When a person undergoes surgery that involves anesthesia and cutting, the risks become even greater.

Not only is there a risk of a fatal reaction to anesthesia or other drugs used during the procedure, a surgeon may make a mistake and cut the wrong place, or the person just may not have the constitution to undergo surgery. There are tales every year of people who went in for cosmetic surgery and did not come out again.

The question of whether the potential for looking somewhat more like your ideal of beauty is worth the potential physical risk of cosmetic surgery is something that every individual who considers cosmetic surgery has to answer for him or her self. Cosmetic surgery can also become addictive for some. There are people who.