Before researching and drafting this post I honestly didn’t think plastic surgery was a big deal. All of us do all kinds of weird and wonderful things to our bodies! We make big alterations and small alterations – who’s to say a little lip injection is that much different from getting long, blonde extensions after having a black bob?
We’ve obviously drawn some kind of absurd imaginary line between what’s “okay” and what’s “not”. Remember when pictures of Lil Kim came out the other week and people said she was “unrecognizable”? Or Renée Zellweger a few years back? Celebrities have always been this awful kind of unofficial weathervane for what levels of aesthetic alteration are acceptable.
As far as I can tell, it’s a combination of permanence and positioning. Apparently getting temporary lip fillers is way less of a big deal than getting a nose job.
And nobody cares about boob jobs anymore, but if you accuse someone of getting butt implants you better have some evidence to back it up because apparently a fake tush is a faux pas.
Butt implants and butt lifts have had one of the largest spike in popularity since 2014 (up 36%) but in one episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim got an x-ray of her butt to prove it was real – to her sisters. Despite this, she’s quoted saying: “I’m totally not against plastic surgery. Trust me honey, if I take this bra off you will tell me I need to get them done.” Why the distinction between the boobs and the butt?
Nicki Minaj kept silent about boob jobs and butt jobs for years but totally lashed out when people finally accused her of getting facial work done. At least there seems like a clear distinction there – that changing your face is a different thing. On a really basic level, this makes sense, right? Altering your waist-to-hip ratio is one thing. Bigger boobs? Sure. But altering the face you were born with… most of us baulk at that. Our faces make us who we are.
What about an area of our body that barely anyone else ever sees? Here’s something that’s definitely. Not. Okay:
According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery Between 2014 and 2015, there was an 80% increase in the number of girls 18 and younger receiving genital plastic surgery.
*Record scratches* – Wait. What?
Before we even start dissecting why this is happening, we need to understand and appreciate that labiaplasty can cause loss of sexual sensation, numbness, pain or scarring. That means that really young women hate the way their private parts look enough to potentially sacrifice the level at which they can enjoy sex for the rest of their lives.
I may not know where the moral line lays, but this stuff is definitely on the wrong side of it.
Teens are getting way more boob jobs too. More than 8,000 teen girls received augmentation breast surgery in 2014, nearly double the number from just four years earlier. The numbers were so shocking that now the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have new guidelines. They’re supposed to do some screening now to make sure these girls don’t have body dysmorphia.
But what can we expect? Young women are more empowered and independent than ever. They’re also more connected, educated, and feel worse about themselves than ever before. Seems like we need a bit more of Kate Winslet around the place: “It goes against my morals, the way that my parents brought me up and what I consider to be natural beauty. I will never give in.” To finish, I think Cher said it best in 2002:
“If I want to put my tits on my back, it’s nobody’s business but my own.”
Trust Cher to keep it, er, real.
– Bri
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