SCABs

Plastic Surgery and I – By @victorialeed

By Victoria D’Andrea

 

Plastic Surgery and I

With Love Island seemingly a constant source of discussion on Twitter at the moment, someone had to write about this pop culture phenomenon. Well, it won’t be me as I don’t watch it (not that I think there’s anything against it).

However, as I get repeated notifications about it from Google news for some inexplicable reason, I can’t help knowing that most people on the show have had work done under the surgeon’s scalpel.

Now, while that sort of information usually gives me little to reflect, recently it has become more personal. One of my friends was seriously considering getting some Botox injections, so any previous discussions I’d had suddenly went from hypotheticals to a real conversation. Not that Botox is such an extreme job, but as I was asked to give my opinion, I took the matter seriously.

On one side, how could I encourage her to go forward with her plan?!
We should find beauty in each other’s differences and learn to be comfortable with what we have. Otherwise, you risk never being satisfied and ending up looking like a completely different person. Also, she is absolutely gorgeous how she is, I don’t really see the point in spending that sort of money.

To add to that, I get the feeling that with each person that decided to give their face a remodelling the patriarchy wins. One small retouch seems a small thing, but it feels like a constant cycle. The more people get work done, the more it becomes the norm to look perfect and the more it encourages more people to change their appearance. Even worse, as I have now discovered, many of these small interventions are not hugely noticeable. Only if you look at a person pre and after surgery can you see the difference. Only then do you see it improves their look. Which means that many of us look at women and men not realising they have had work done, and think that people just look like that.

It seems like it will just end up in a dystopian world such as the one represented in the novel ‘Uglies’ where we all just automatically get the upgrade when we turn of age.

Now for the other side of the argument.

Why shouldn’t we be allowed to change to match with everyone’s idea of beautiful? We can’t deny that attractive people live a different experience to those on the more normal-side.

After all, there are some people that are just born beautiful and it’s unfair that we insist we stay the way genetic luck has made us. Why not make it even for everyone and let people look exactly how they want. If not, it would seem as some sort of class system, where you are not allowed to change what beauty category you are born in, never allowed to make a better face/life for yourself.

There are many more arguments on this side, like being able to do with our bodies whatever we want without any judgement etc, but the one I’ve already explained always convinces me enough to not search for other explanations.

Some of you might be wondering what I ended up telling my friend.

Well, this SCAB is actually for her.

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