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?!

@Swissmountains you have an extremely black and white way of looking at cosmetic surgery. I am not a parent, nor do I plan to be so no worries about any children-shock horror-finding out that Mummy has had a few little injections! Several women in my circle have had it subtly and pay a lot for it and all look fabulous! You have probably met someone who has had botox and not realised due to it being well-done and administered by a medical professional. 😊

Totally disagree. Why are you acting as big brother? Who put you in charge? I certainly don’t want a government acting any more as big brother than they already do either.

If you haven’t brought your kids up to see this as silly then that’s on you, don’t try and solve it by putting it on a government to control! My young adult DD isn’t interested in any of this, hasn’t had anything done and I can’t see it happening in the future because we did our job properly. My sons don’t see this as ‘attractive’ as we have done our job properly. Same as porn, we have taught our kids that nothing they would see is ‘normal’. Do you want the government to do your job with porn and your kids as well? Where does this stop?

I think words like 'tweakment' and other twee language like 'freshen up' and 'optimisation' used to describe invasive procedures is what really annoyed me. The deliberate playing down the potential seriousness of procedures such as fillers, laser, bleaching etc to make it sound like something harmless that falls out of a Kinder Surprise Egg give me the rage.

The ridiculous standard it sets is to look ridiculous! I can’t understand why anyone sees these people with their inflated lips and all the rest of the surgeries and think wow I want to look like that. My reaction is always wow why would anyone want to look like that 🤷‍♀️

It’s a shame that the medical staff involved in carrying out these procedures don’t do something more useful to society with their skills by working in the NHS. Sad reflection of society really.

Well that’s gender for you. Society essentially positions women as decorative objects. Valued for how we look.

So medical staff aren't allowed to earn more money like everyone else? They should martyr themselves for the good of humanity? Yeah, unless you are doing exactly that and never putting your own needs first you really aren't in a position to expect this of others.

I've been thinking exactly the same @DanseAvecLesLoups ! The twee language is annoying - and it seriously downplays the fact that the procedures are invasive and can have terrible consequences.

I'm amazed that so many women here can't see how harmful the culture of cosmetic surgery has become.

I wonder how many PP who are vigorously defending it either have/had work done - but perhaps wouldn't admit it.

Absolutely.

And women are complicit in this because we're doing it to ourselves. No one values mature beauty. To be attractive, everyone has to have the same fake, plastic, uber-smooth Hollywood look, complete with pumped-up lips.

The never-ending quest for perfection and flawlessl beauty isn't healthy, yet that's the example we're setting for our young girls (and boys).

Adult women paying for cosmetic treatments is as far from FGM it is as possible to be.

It's weird and disgusting to compare FGM to cosmetic procedures.

I hope no one here is suffering from the long term effects of FGM as they read your comment.

The never-ending quest for perfection and flawlessl beauty isn't healthy

Not many people are looking for flawless perfection. Most of us are aware that's never going to happen. We're just looking for the best version of ourselves that we can be bothered to get.

What's interesting is how many people think the procedures they like are fine and it's only the ones they don't like that are so very toxic.

YABVVVVVVVVVVVVU @EmmaDilemma5 I have not had any type of procedures, BUT I will defend and protect bodily autonomy and to spend their money as they choose. I don't want to live in a dictatorship like North Korea, where hair cut and make up choices are controlled.

lip fillers look ridiculous. You can always tell, despite some women saying theirs is really well done. Occasionally it can be, but most of the time it looks absurd.

I haven't had work done but why shouldn't people if they want to? It is their body and your child isn't their problem quite frankly.

What's interesting is how many people think the procedures they like are fine and it's only the ones they don't like that are so very toxic.

I think there is a very clear demarcation between invasive and non invasive procedures. People on here trying draw some equivalence between shaving your legs or dying you hair and injecting synthetic hyaluronic acid into your face are being disingenuous.

a few of my friends have had lip fillers and I’ve pretended not to notice. I think as a trend it will die out like all others.

Some people seem to have a strong aversion to anything "injected", but that's their personal feeling, not an objective mark of acceptability. Acupuncture also involves needles.

Botox is quicker and cheaper (you do it less often) than a cut and colour and very safe as long as you go to a proper provider. Hair dye and bleach have risks too.

I'm reminded of former Playboy bunny Holly Madison, who thought herself superior to other mansion girls because while they all had nose and boob jobs and bleached hair, she didn't have lip fillers.

I notice the clearly overdone ones, like we're seeing right now on The Apprentice. Can't say if I'd notice more subtle ones.

But I agree with PPs that it's a trend and it'll pass.

i am very pale and always have been- the trend has always been to be tanned in my lifetime. Do I insist that women stop fake tanning because I feel I have to? No
Have we banned sunbeds despite the clear risks? No. Because I truly like my skin, nothing pressures me into feeling otherwise
Let people live OP- you say you are bringing up a confident daughter and have no real insecurities yet are also worried about both of your lips as you have mentioned. That is nothing to do with other people getting fillers, because you also think fillers look crap. If people didn’t get fillers you would still be insecure about that part of your body. Maybe you need to make peace with it.

I wouldn't be too concerned. Fashions come and go. Todays school children will reject big lips/frozen faces/sharpie eyebrows/mammoth boobs/tattoos as the things that their out of touch and dowdy elders have.

OTOH it might become fashionable to have the things you think are unacceptable - big noses might become desirable or people might want their ears pinned forward to a 90degree angle.

when I was growing up in the 70s the desirable look was to have small boobs and a tiny pert bum. I was winning with the flat bum but hated my 30DD boobs (although I didn't know that was the size they were - like 99% of the country I wore a 34B bra because that's what the shops had! It was unthinkable back then that anyone outside the sex industry would want big boobs. It was also unthinkable that anyone would actually seek surgery to make their bums bigger. But fashions changed and they will again.

Human insecurity means many people think they will be better/more desirable if they change themselves. It's gone on forever. Some are relatively innocuous - Elizabethan women plucking out their hair to get a high forehead. regency ladies soaking their petticoats and dresses in water so they will cling to their legs, Regency men wearing shirt collars so high and pointed that they couldn't turn their heads. Flapper girls in the 1920s shaving off their eyebrows to draw in a single pencil line a la Clara Bow.

Other things are harmful - Arsenic was used as makeup for centuries, Victorian women damaged their respiratory systems and organs by tightlacing their corsets, Chinese women were unable to walk because of footbinding. None of those things happen now. And if some modern trends turn out to be permanently damaging they will end. But new things will come along.

Exactly. See also "top surgery" for "trans folx". Body modifications are getting more and more extreme and the language for it is getting teenier and weenier.
We are more and more disembodied and this isn't helping mental health. It's hurting it.

I get Botox regularly

i get it because it makes me look better and I like to look better.

Its not my responsibility to meet beauty standards for other women.

We have got to STOP blaming other women for misogyny and expecting women to put the feelings of strangers before their own because of some ill perceived greater good

*model beauty standards

I get Botox too. I don't colour my hair. I don't see why one is so much worse than the other. They are both temporary and very safe when done properly. Colouring costs more because you do it every few weeks. I have Botox every 12-18 months. It takes barely 90 seconds.

I started getting it done after a shocking year a few years ago, including but not limited to a very sudden double bereavement. I suddenly developed deep lines that I hadn't had before and which frankly I was too young for. I put it off due to some vague idea that it was morally sinful and worse than a dye job. Eventually I was so miserable about it that I went to look into it. The doctor had a very honest and reassuring chat with me first.

MNers like to tell me it doesn't make me look younger and actually they're right, it doesn’t. It's not supposed to. It just makes me look less traumatised and angry. More like me before the horror.

And I can still frown and raise my brows and all the rest of it. You need to work at it to get the spoon with hair look. A low dose once a year or so won't do it. Nobody knows. Yes, I know some of you don't like that and won't believe it. Doesn't make it less true.

The interesting thing is how very normal all the people in the waiting room look (the clinic does various procedures). Nobody looks like a Kardashian, nobody is totally done up, nobody looks out of the ordinary. I've no idea what procedures they're all there for. But if it works for them like Botox does for me, good for them.

Meh. Who am I to judge. I have lip filler 😅