Cosmetic surgery DOES affect others

[EmmaDilemma5]

I'm sick of reading people who defend others cosmetic surgery/procedures with;

"it's their body, they can do as they please"

"Each to their own"

"If it makes them feel happier then what's the harm?"

The harm is, that it sets a ridiculous standard that most (usually young women) can't meet naturally and therefore feel pressured to undergo changes to their body to look "good".

It's not a personal decision, because collectively, it's impacting society norms and pressures on people.

I'm not talking about those that truly help people with abnormally different features. I totally get why someone with ears that grow out at 90° may want them pinned back. Or someone with a huge nose may want to reduce it to a more "normal" size. I still hope they'd feel fine in their own skin but get why the majority of people may struggle with largely unusual features.

But I am actually angry sometimes at those that "enhance" normal looks. Lip fillers, tattoo makeup on eyebrows, lips, boob jobs. It seems to me that the majority of women who have these procedures have very normal features before having them and it's just really sad that they feel they need to undergo them to feel ok.

Lip fillers are the worst for me. It's affordable and easy to arrange. I fear my daughter will grow up thinking her lips aren't big enough (if her parents' are anything to go by anyway) because every other person seems to have massive lips and to look beautiful she'll need to pump her face with crap.

When do we say, enough is enough, we don't want the next generation living like this?!

Tell me you don’t lip read without telling me you don’t lip read 🙄

doesn’t matter if it doesn’t “sound right” to you. Fillers change the way the mouth moves.

please don’t presume to tell me how my hearing issue affects me.

Preventatives. Or relaxing particularly tense or wrinkled areas.

You really wouldn’t want people to notice, would you? That can get into uncanny valley territory, where you only look good in photos

Fillers change the way the mouth moves

So you just mean lip fillers? So dental work would also cause this effect? (Genuine question)

please don’t presume to tell me how my hearing issue affects me

I wouldn’t, save for what appears as a claim that you have a special ability to suss out who uses Botox and fillers.

This isn’t really what you are claiming tho, right? Maybe I am misunderstanding your meaning here.

Just because you've not had any work done, it doesn't make you any of a better person than I. It just makes you sound miserable and judgemental.
I'd rather have had tweaks done to my face, than be a miserable judgemental woman and have haggard skin. ✌🏼

Love this. I haven't said I'm a better person. In fact, I've said we're all victim of the same old sexist bullshit to a greater or lesser degree.

But I'm especially amused that having an issue with the way the patriarchy has done a number on women and you must be a miserable woman with haggard skin 🤣

Ooof, the misogyny is strong here. What a terrible thing to have a couple of age lines. Of course there's nothing wrong with women looking their age though, no no no, definitely no misogyny behind the anti-aging marketing.

I don't mean you, specifically, think you're better than everybody else.

It was a broadcast statement to the judgemental women on the thread who haven't had fillers or Botox.

Again, I wasn't saying you are haggard.
I would rather have some work done as without it I would have haggard skin, due to chemotherapy.

Stop reaching.

@Cileymyrus

Rightttt...

So because you have a hearing impairment you know exactly who hashad fillers and Botox and who hasn't.

Fillers don't relax the muscle around the mouth, it enhances the size of the lips. So I'll go back to my earlier question, surely then anyone with big lips you struggle to lip read?

Nobody is 'mocking' you. Nobody needs to 'tell you we don't lip read without telling you we don't lip read' (get off of tiktok where every man and their dog seem to be saying that statement which sounds so ridiculous it just invalidates your point you're making)

But your post doesn't make sense. Filler doesn't relax the muscles. Therefore doesn't change how people speak. Plus, everybody speaks differently with different mouth movements, accents, mouth shape, surely a bit of lip filler doesn't trump all of that, or are you just so desperate to say us with fillers and Botox make life harder for people with disabilities?

No.. we don't. But ok.

ok.

you think what you like, and you can argue that I am wrong about my own hearing issues.

i am the one with the impairment, and I find it difficult to read lips when they have been filled.

if you don’t believe me, crack on.

do you always think you know more than disabled people about how their issues affect them?

omg This thread is turning seriously weird now .

🤣

I've heard it all now.

I don't mean you, specifically, think you're better than everybody else.

It was a broadcast statement to the judgemental women on the thread who haven't had fillers or Botox
You quoted my post and then started with the 'you'. Unfortunately I'm not a mind reader and quoting a post then talking about how 'you' think you're better for not having work done very much doesn't read like a general comment.

@Cileymyrus do you find it hard to lipread people with naturally fuller lips then?
As filler doesn't relax the muscles in the lips, just enhances the size (if done correctly and subtly).

I don't see the link to the patriarchy tbh. Men are just as eager to look good and the data points to them being more likely to have body dysmorphia.

No, it doesn't. It says the exact opposite

Both men and women – about 40% of people with BDD are men, and about 60% are women.

bdd.iocdf.org/about-bdd/who-gets/

I'd be interested to know how old that link/data is.

Historically, there wasn't much recognition of muscle dysmorphia which disproportionately affects men. Part of the issue is that gym fixated men were seen as 'health obsessed' rather than actually having poor mental health as more recently acknowledged.

Also, the desire for men to be 'hench' is more recent a trend than the desire for women to be slim - it was only in the 80s we started seeing huge muscular men and they weren't mainstream then like they are now - all the Tom Hardy/Vin Diesel/Jason Momoa types that are held up as sex symbols. Below is some data from the last couple of years.

According to a survey by social enterprise Better, the majority of men (54 per cent) and nearly half of women (49 per cent) show signs of body dysmorphia.

Majority of men in Britain show signs of body dysmorphia, study says

www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/body-image-dysmorphia-men-women-b1960678.html%3famp

In the United States, BDD occurs in about 2.5% in males, and in 2.2 % of females.

adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/body-dysmorphic-disorder#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20BDD,and%20in%202.2%20%25%20of%20females.

It may even be as common as anorexia. A study written in the journal Body Image finds muscle dysmorphia is psychologically very similar to anorexia nervosa. However, the condition is very under-reported: while anorexia nervosa was first coined around 1873, the phrase “muscle dysmorphia” only entered the psychiatric lexicon in 1997.

www.menshealth.com/uk/building-muscle/a758438/why-1-in-10-men-could-be-suffering-from-bigorexia/

Rob Willson, chair of the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation, said: "We know about 10% of men in the gym may have muscle dysmorphia."

He believes the condition is a growing problem, but that many cases may be going undiagnosed because there is little awareness of the disorder.

Muscle dysmorphia: One in 10 men in gyms believed to have 'bigorexia'

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-34307044.amp

Interesting. I think that data is all really poor quality though - a survey for Better? 'It may even affect up to 10%'?

This makes me think there is absolutely no good quality data on this topic.

So I'd be very wary of confidently stating anything about it.

My personal experience is that all women feel the pressure of being judged on their looks in a way that many men do not.

I would be extremely sceptical of a survey done to promote a leisure fitness brand that claims over HALF of all the men in this country have BDD. that's patently rubbish

So you don't think that the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation might know what they're talking about?

I agree the data is poor but steroid use has been well documented to be rising, especially with Gen Z males, and the gyms are certainly packed with men lifting weights. Our scant availability of data likely belies the size (pardon the pun) of the issue.

Also, the above doesn't actually say that the majority of men have dysmorphia. It says they show signs of dysmorphia, which isn't the same thing. This could be things like being unhappy with their body image or wanting bigger arms etc.

The desire for a muscular physique is growing in men but the Kate Moss aesthetic is no longer what most women desire, so I'd not be surprised if the tables have somewhat turned. Women being too fat is actually the bigger (again pardon the pun) issue.

It must be like 20 years ago that Jennifer Lopez was voted most beautiful woman in the world and getting 'Rear of the Year' awards etc, and a 'thick' physique is still seen as desirable. Big bums are still seen as attractive in a way they weren't a couple of decades ago.

Actually, I've contradicted myself. It was more than 20 years ago that the heroin chic thing was popular. The rise of the Kardashians and the 'booty' trend was likely part of what killed off the whole superwaif thing.

@MademoiselleTrunchbull

So you don't think that the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation might know what they're talking about?

I think that they have a vested interest in overstating the incidence, for very obvious reasons.

The language used is so vague and woolly as to be meaningless. "As many as 1 in 10 may show signs of"? Means absolutely nothing.

I'm a regular gym goer and I know that there are plenty of men trying to improve their physique. To claim that 54% of men suffer from BDD, i.e. that a man is more likely than not to have this condition, is really obviously bollocks.

Yes. It's sexist, misogynist and very socially irresponsible. As is most beauty industry/modelling/fashion.
Less so as males are beginning to take more interest in self-adornment, make up etc., but even so, it does create an unhealthy set of expectations.

I'm a regular gym goer and I know that there are plenty of men trying to improve their physique. To claim that 54% of men suffer from BDD, i.e. that a man is more likely than not to have this condition, is really obviously bollocks.

Yes, I agree that would be bollocks if it was actually what they were saying. However, as I stated in my above post (which you obviously didn't read) they're not saying that at all.

They're saying 54% of men show signs of BDD, which realistically probably means things like wanting bigger arms. Much like how women who wouldn't be classed as having body dysmorphia may still desire a firmer bum/slimmer waist etc.

The figure the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation are estimating is 10% of gym going men, which is much less than 54% of all men, given that around one in seven men has a gym membership. It's about 1.4% of men.

Given that 1.2% of the general population are estimated to have anorexia it's still not an insignificant figure if around 1.4% of men alone have 'bigorexia'.

I don't desire to turn this into another one of those battles of the sexes which mumsnet seems to love. I just think a lot of women are so used to being told they're the victim that they're oblivious to the fact that men have a lot of their own issues, which they don't tend to talk about openly like women do.

My partner takes testosterone for a hormonal imbalance and has had to educate himself as the NHS is so woeful at treating this area compared with other countries. A lot of the best sites for advice on monitoring estradiol and managing aromatisation were online forums where steroid users discuss their bloodwork etc. It completely opened my eyes to how common it actually is.

Anecdotally, amongst the 20s somethings, young men of my acquaintance are far more body conscious than young women. My DSs tell me there is a strong expectation that they all have a gym body, whereas young women seem to care very little, and are frequently (and happily) overweight (which they call 'curvy')
For women in their circles and indeed amongst my colleagues, the focus is far less on weight and fitness and far more on cosmetics; heavy make up, hair extensions, gel nails, lashes, eyebrows, and to come back to the focus of the thread, increasingly, enhanced lips.
So my takeaway is that the standards for women are as high, if not higher, than ever, but have moved more towards consumable beauty rather than that 'achieved' eg through diet and health, or naturally occurring.
And that there are new expectations on men, which are comparable to the ones on women 30 years ago, in that they revolve around the body.

My DSs tell me there is a strong expectation that they all have a gym body, whereas young women seem to care very little, and are frequently (and happily) overweight (which they call 'curvy').

Oof. 😂

You're not wrong though. The body positivity/empowerment thing doesn't really seem to apply fat men like it does women. Nobody wants a BBM. 😂