Plastic Surgery

The Imperfect Perfect

Everyone longs to be beautiful. According to the dictionary, beauty is defined as the quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality (Dictoinary.com). But in todayЎЇs society, beauty in a woman appears to be measured by the size of her waist or bust, by the thinness of her body and legs, the straightness of her nose, and even the thickness of her lips. Women all over the world are driven by the media and advertisements to try to meet societyЎЇs unholy standards of perfection. In chasing after beauty, people have turned to cosmetic surgery, the tool brought upon humankind by science to help achieve ÐŽoperfection.ÐŽ± Cosmetic surgery takes scientific knowledge and controls it like a wand, helping change nature to fulfill desire in a personЎЇs desperate search for a beautiful body and perfect features. Cosmetic surgery defies the laws of nature. It takes the role of god and manipulates peopleЎЇs

appearances.

Is it right to take a knife and chop up our faces, or to add bits and remove pieces of our bodies just to suit our own liking, just so we can feel better about ourselves? The shiny knife of cosmetic surgery distorts the appearances nature granted to each of us; it enables us to play the role of god in helping us readily discard the bodies we were born with, and to come up with something entirely different. We are taking our faces, our looks, which are supposed to be created by genetics and experience, and simply slicing and dicing away at them, just because we think that since we now have ability to be able to do so, we can just go right ahead.

In the East, women have had their calves reshaped for longer legs, and their jaw bone shaved for a slimmer face. Eyelid-fold surgery is now the most popular cosmetic surgical procedure among Asian women, in an attempt to make themselves look more western, like the actresses they see on television (Haworth 112). On the other side of the world, having fat vacuumed off various parts of the body is very popular, as is having silicone injected into breasts or lips, trying to make them appear more voluptuous . None of these processes are completely safe. As with any other surgeries, there is always a chance of something going wrong. Scars can be left permanently, using the

wrong type of materials, such as silicones, can dissolve under the skin, and the results might not be exactly what you wished for.

Cosmetic surgery has not only twisted the natural laws of the human condition, but it also has gone on to corrupt our idea of beauty and of self. It enables people to change themselves instead of valuing and respecting themselves as they are. Cosmetic surgery encourages society to focus solely on outer appearances more than ever before, and while doing so, strips away individuality as we all strive to embody the same unchanging idea of outside perfection. Slowly,