Have we as a society lost sight of the value of a functioning, undamaged, whole body?

[RainWithSunnySpells]

I was reading the womb transplant thread in AIBU the other day and a couple of the replies made me wonder the above.

Maybe there has been a building effect over the years with the increasing normality of plastic surgery.

Don't like something about your body? Go under the knife, take hormones etc.

Not using an organ? How about donating it?

I am aware that I have phrased this slightly flippantly, but does anyone else agree with my musings?

If 'yes' what can we do about it? Or is this a future that it is too late to back away from?

For those suggesting it's OK because it was 'just' the uterus that was taken:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323999

We are at the beginning of research into this, but there does seem to be evidence that there's a uterus-brain axis, similar to the gut-brain axis. It's definitely the case (as usual) that we don't really understand how female bodies work because we haven't researched them properly, have just assumed that we work the same as males just with a few added extra parts.

I think we should have kept the subjective out of body modification and only offered plastic surgery to people who had an extreme body part (burns, nose in top 5% size wise) or who had health complications. It should only ever have been a way to bring the abnormal back into the normal range - not the reverse.

Psychologically, if someone stands out and hates it you can fix that by stopping them stand out and they'll be happier. The research should never have extrapolated that success into a general point to people in the normal range. People getting surgery to stand out or for attention are never going to be happy.

Morally, there isn't much to differentiate women getting massive, unrealistic boobs and women getting boobs removed - both are moving from the normal, healthy range to the extremes and we never properly investigated why they want to do that.

Who is 'we' though? @MyEyesMyThighs

If the technology exists, and there are qualified people, and there's a demand for it...in a capitalist society you'd have to make it illegal to stop it. And why would you bother making boob/nose/whatever jobs illegal?

For the most part they improve the quality of life of the patient, and I don't think we should hold those people responsible for the moral fabric of society when it comes to bodily aesthetics.

Surgeons can be very casual about the effects of what they do and young people who are physically healthy and maybe never experienced any medical interventions don't have the experience of really feeling ill or in pain after surgery or whatever. Still remember the surgeon telling my DH he could go straight back to work after leaving hospital with a pacemaker and the GP took one look and signed him off for a month.

And especially with gender surgery there's an emphasis on how it looks over how it works or even how it feels. Constructed genitals don't have anything like the same sensations as the ones that grow naturally. They don't work in anything like the same way either. Common sense should tell us that anyway but people have a naive faith in the possibilities of modern medicine and it still needs to be said.

And I am repeatedly boggled by the attitude of surgeons like Marci Bowers'. Young people and families are sold the idea of surgery long before they can have any idea just how inadequate it is. Bait and switch.

What is really advanced cosmetic medicine and exciting for surgeons can be utterly inadequate and pathetic from the point of view of the patient. So the surgeons can truthfully bang on about how groundbreaking their work is while the patients imagine that means they will get something that works enough like the real thing when it means no such thing.

Has anyone read "Vagina Obscura"? It's mostly fantastic book but there's a shocking chapter (called Beauty!) about surgically constructed vaginas/vulvas for transwomen where Marci Bowers extols the virtues of a constructed fanny with no obvious scars and that doesn't gape open. Well that's not what I'd call a high standard. Quite apart from being a pretty sexist view of what a functioning vagina means.

I briefly considered a boob job in my mid 20s, but was put off mainly by the sight of the implants themselves before they go in, and by the fact they have to be replaced at some point.

I was horrified to read, on a fitness group I'm on, that having implants below the pectoral muscles, which is popular for a more natural look, means that you can't do much weights work afterwards or they will shift. So people are ruining the functionality of a major muscle group for an entirely cosmetic procedure.

I don’t think this is really about maintaining bodily integrity as much as about not accepting the total lie that you can change sex if you don’t like life in your birth sex
I think that very many people though illness, age, accident and acquired health issues don’t have the body they were born with and that is perfectly OK and a very positive thing
so for me it’s not about celebrating what is natural. What is natural can actually kill you in some medical situations.

I would echo that. Decades ago I knew a bloke who had suffered a catastrophic disabling injury in his teens, and had been a wheelchair user for a decade or more. He got a lot out of his life, but he still craved things he could no longer do. Ever since, I have been so grateful to have a body that mostly works. If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Surgery for cosmetic purposes has been so normalised that it appears like a walk in the park. Of course celebrities are unlikely to publicise infections or complications, and they can afford the best treatment.

That’s looking from the outside in, though. We don’t hear about loss of feeling or function. We just see perky tits, smooth foreheads, trim waists, full but pert backsides.

It trivialises what surgery actually means. If money were no object and I felt pressure to maintain or change my body through such extreme means, maybe I’d feel the same.

Some interesting opinions. Thanks for posting everyone, it's given me a lot to think about.

I should add that I am disabled myself due to an accident and that I have needed several operations due to this. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals and clinics (plus the RDA 😎) with people who are not only disabled due to accidents but also for congenital and genetic/degenerative reasons.

I wasn't thinking about this group of people as IME, they know full well the value of a functioning body and many have also been through operations and know the realistic pros and cons there. Actual experience can be a harsh teacher.

I think I was imagining people I know who have been lucky in that their body has always worked. They have no extreme physical traits that resulted in bullying. They've never has severe illness or injury etc.

Maybe it was a 'you don't know what you have until it's gone' kind of thought that was running around my head?

I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle.
Humans are social and co-operative, but also competitive and status driven- we like to conform and fit in, but also to be that little bit better than anyone else.
All of our industries and society hinge on this, it isn't just surgery- cosmetics, diet, fashion, cars, houses, furniture.
As long as these surgeries exist, people will have them, because the desire to 'improve' ourselves is probably as old as the species.

Part also follows on from social model of disability stuff - there is no objective assessment of disability, you are only disabled because society makes you disabled. So it is all societies fault.

My assessment of disability is if you are removed from society and placed on your own on the African savannah, are there aspect of your physical and mental status that stops you looking after yourself (age and knowledge aside)? I think we have increasingly become removed from this scenario so that a healthy body is not only not seen to be of value, but you can be considered discriminatory, prejudice, etc to even consider it.

And the fact that if is even considered prejudiced to value a healthy body then leads to that situation where academics argue that is ok to for mothers to take teratogenic medications, such as testosterone, because it is bigoted to seek to have healthy children.

RE the point about teratogenic medications during pregnancy.

That is clearly an utterly insane way of thinking. Just WTH? How far we have fallen down the rabbit hole becomes clearer and clearer.

ETA. These academics should spend some time with children with degenerative genetic conditions or serious congenital issues. Maybe open their eyes a bit to the reality?

Please can we not just bash ‘academics’ as if they are one thing
Scientists, Medics, any kind of specialist, researchers who keep bodies healthy and spend a lot of time with patients and their families- including the social researchers who interview patients to see what’s important to them- they all spend their whole working lives trying to gather evidence so that health systems can then improve things for those patients’ outcomes.

If you mean a particular type of academic area or school of thought then please be specific. Otherwise you’re just sounding as idiotic like Michael Gove claiming that we’re all ‘sick of experts‘..

I’d rather have a fully trained professional informed by the latest research as my doctor than the alternative thanks

NAAALT - Not all academics are like that.

Sorry, I had thought that using the quote function would make it clear that the academics in my post were specifically the ones who 'argue that is ok to for mothers to take teratogenic medications, such as testosterone, because it is bigoted to seek to have healthy children'.

I hope that this post clarifies that. I will try to be more specific in future.

I thought we were both clear.

Sorry to be so stroppy and get the wrong end of the stick. I should have read more carefully before firing off that post. My apologies

One of the few places where I feel OK being a woman who says sorry a lot. You guys are awesome.