Cosmetic Plastic Surgery

Essay #4 on Cosmetic Plastic Surgery

We live in a generation where few girls are happy with their bodies and perfection is idolized. Few people we see on TV and in magazines are natural. Most celebrities and models we see have either had plastic surgery or are digitally enhanced. Cosmetic plastic surgery is becoming more and more common.

There are a lot of negative stories about cosmetic plastic surgery. There are three problems with cosmetic plastic surgery that if resolved can make plastic surgery beneficial. First of all, doctors are not thoroughly walking their patients through the process before hand. Secondly young teenagers shouldn't be able to get plastic surgery because they do not fully understand that it's permanent and may regret it later. Thirdly, people are getting plastic surgery for their careers and because they feel pressured into it and regretting it later. If we get rid of those three problems plastic surgery will be more beneficial and we'll hear fewer horror stories about plastic surgery.

Teenagers are in the process of figuring out their identity that is not a good time to be changing your face or body. It is appropriate for teenagers to experiment with different things like their hair color or their clothes because those thing can easily be changed back to normal. However if a teenager experiments with their body such as getting breast implants or changing the shape of their nose that is not easy to reverse. Also, plastic surgery requires upkeep. A breast implant may move around or a lip implant may shift. Then later on teenagers would have to deal with problems that they were not anticipating. Getting plastic surgery done requires spending a lot of time and money to keep up with it.

In Sadie Nicholas' article "Nip and UN-tuck: Why we regret our teenage cosmetic surgery" she discusses different teenagers stories, and shows a perspective we may not see. Nicholas believes that teenagers should not get plastic surgery. She discusses different stories of ladies who got breast implants when they were teenagers and how they feel about their breast implants now. What they did not realize about breast implants is that you have to keep getting work done to them. The breast implants may begin sagging or begin to shift around. Nicholas also gives us examples of teenage girls who got breast implants and regretted it. One lady Nicholas interviewed was Louise Glover who says that she went way too big and regretted it, but is now stuck with huge breasts because she does not have the money to get it undone. Another lady was Kate Birch-Davis who was a nineteen year old girl who felt as though she should get big breast implants right away so she would not want to get bigger breast implants later on. Most of her friends that had gotten breast implants wished they had went bigger. What she did not realize is the impact this decision would have on her life. She had unnaturally huge breasts and as a result was not respected by guys and girls alike. She was just a trophy to the guys and girls would insult her. She went way too far with her surgery because of what other people told her to do and regretted it. Nigel Mercer the president-elect of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons and plastic surgeon says that "At 16, a girl is legally entitled to have a breast augmentation or any other surgery without consent from her parents." Though Mercer believes at sixteen and seventeen most girls are physically matured, he is worried about their emotional maturity.

Another reason cosmetic plastic surgery is dangerous is that doctors are not informing their patients. Heidi Montag, who was a young aspiring actress, got over ten procedures done in one day. She felt like her doctor did not prepare