Community: Real Life

A plastic society


Feima Sannoh

Feima, 17, is studying for her A-Levels. In her spare time she enjoys listening to music, dancing, shopping and swimming. She loves writing poetry and has even had a few published. She doesn't know what she wants to be and is just waiting to see where life takes her.

Feima thinks that it's important to look good but can't understand why people go under the knife in the name of beauty.

Cosmetic surgery is a growing phenomenon in today's society. It's estimated that the market is worth a staggering £900m - clearly Britons are too quick to go under the knife. What's more, 42% of teenagers have thought about having cosmetic surgery, according to a recent survey by Bliss magazine. I'm absolutely disturbed by these figures; we clearly pay more attention to our looks than our brains. What sort of message are we sending out to the rest of the world?

Before I start ranting on I need to make a distinction between the different types of plastic surgery. In no way am I criticising a child who needs to have surgery because of a dog bite, a woman who needs to have breast surgery after undergoing cancer treatment, or a young girl who needs to go under the knife due to an ear deformity. The above examples are, of course, justified. What I can't comprehend is the number of vain people who wish to postpone the signs of aging or iron out wrinkles. The list doesn't end there! Many more people are now opting for rhinoplasty aka a 'nose job' as well as buccal fat removal or 'chipmunk cheeks'. For those of you who have belly buttons that stick out you can now have an umbilicoplasty, and liposuction and boob jobs now seem to be the new norm. In a recent documentary on Channel Four called The Perfect Vagina I was appalled to see the number of women who were actually considering having cosmetic surgery on their vaginas. The presenter Lisa Rogers couldn't understand "why girls want to cut up their bits" and neither can I. It's probably a mixture of obsession and paranoia. Cosmetic surgery is definitely spiralling out of control and I dread to think what's next. What happened to inner beauty - has that phrase become extinct? 

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this the popularity of cosmetic surgery is the lengths people are prepared to go to look 'perfect'. The average cost of breast surgery is £5,750 and the equivalent figure for a nose job is £4,450. It's a waste of money if you ask me. It seems as though everyone wants a piece of Liz Hurley's bust or Jennifer Lopez's bum. In order to fund their surgery, people are even prepared to go into debt, which seems outrageous to me. It's astounding that half of the world's population is starving and yet the other half is prepared to spend their life savings on remodelling their faces and bodies.

"Can you believe that these people pay to look superficial and hideous?"

I'm aware that some people have no objections to plastic surgery and may even regard it as life-changing. Nevertheless, I still strongly believe without a speck of doubt that the real issues people need to deal with are psychological and can't be fixed by having fat injections or a facelift. It's a shame that they are naïve enough to believe that all their problems will be cured if only they had bigger breasts and a bigger bottom. Surely there are more important things in life. It's not surprising that more people are opting for plastic surgery as we are constantly bombarded by TV shows such as I want a famous face and Nip/Tuck. These are very misleading shows as they tend to glamorise cosmetic surgery rather than portraying it in a realistic light. Not to mention that cosmetic surgery is very risky and people who choose to go under the knife can only presume that the results will be desirable. Many get it wrong and there is evidently an endless list of celebrities who all show the disastrous effects that surgery can have. Can you believe that these people pay to look superficial and hideous? The saddest thing is that in many cases when botched-up surgery is carried out the damage is not necessarily rectified.

In the wise words of Helen Keller: "The most beautiful things in the world can't be seen or even touched, they must be felt from within the heart." It's a tragedy that we live in a plastic society where it seems as though 'buying beauty' is the way forward.

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