Plum Crazy

Lord knows I understand the desire to look good. To look younger. To be attractive. I really do. I spend a lot of time and money on skin care and hair care.

What I don't understand, though, is why perfectly fine-looking women feel the need to undergo plastic surgery to "make" themselves look good. I'm not talking about women who were born with disfigurements, have been in accidents, lost a breast to cancer, or anything like that. I'm talking about women who look fine. They don't look like movie stars, but then again, most of the time movie stars don't look like movie stars either.

Yesterday, when I was home sick, I had left the TV on low in the background. At some point, Oprah came on. She had devoted her whole show to people who had undergone "extreme makeovers". I'm looking at these women (and one man). Not one of them needed plastic surgery to look better. A better haircut. Contact lenses or lasik surgery*. A little makeup. A different skin care regimen. Some nicer clothes. That was it. It's not even hard, and, with the exception of lasik, it costs a lot less than plastic surgery.

What is wrong when so many fine-looking people hate themselves so much that the only way they think they can feel better is to undergo voluntary surgery or have someone inject their faces with neurotoxins? [If you don't believe they hate themselves, listen to them speak about their desire to undergo plastic surgery and hear how many times the word "hate" is used.] I know I can be accused fairly of being a lesser victim of the same obsession. I do think, though, there's a fundamental difference between applying a skin cream (okay, multiple skin creams and oils) and being cut with a scalpel. Between having facials every month and having a doctor shoot your forehead full of poison.

I'm not advocating that we all walk around looking unkempt. I'm not advocating doing away with cosmetics (although, could we please not call them "cosmeceuticals"). I'd be the world's biggest hypocrite if I were. But shouldn't we be worrying when we're encouraging people to undergo dangerous and invasive medical procedures just because they hate themselves? I know what it's like to look in the mirror and hate what you see. But that's just a feeling that's not based in reality. Wouldn't we be much better off if we helped people accept the reality, rather than celebrating as we slip further and further into a fantasy?

UPDATE: Via Cruella-blog. Corsets, a known cause of physical problems in women, are coming back into fashion. Yes, you too can have an unnaturally small waist. Just as long as breathing easily doesn't mean all that much to you.

*I don't consider lasik surgery to be plastic surgery, since lasik does correct an actual, measurable physical defect.