In my fateful return to Boulder last month, I was greeted by the holy trinity: giant balloon boobs, obvious lip filler and a Botox-ridden face. Innocence I didn’t know I had sloughed off my virgin eyes.
After sitting in the discomfort of seeing that college student, I started to wonder: Does taking offense to plastic surgery — and a girl’s choice in that department — make me less of a feminist? Is a girl spending thousands of dollars on a procedure with bodily risks as long as a CVS receipt really something I should turn a blind eye to? Is that really empowerment?
According to The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery’s (ISAPS) global survey for 2024, aesthetic procedures have increased by 42.5% over the last four years. Young women have accounted for a significant share of this growth. In a press release issued June 19, ISAPS reported that the majority of breast augmentations (54%), rhinoplasties (60.1%) and external genital surgery (48.4%) were performed on women aged 18 to 34.
There’s a strange irony to college students and college-aged girls getting plastic surgery. Instead of weighing the enviable neuroplasticity of their brains, the plasticity of their bodies seemingly bears more thought.
While mortality rates from complications of medical and surgical care declined to 0.85 per 100,000 deaths in 2022, there are still risks to these procedures that your parasocial influencer friends don’t tell you. For one, you can get necrosis from certain nose jobs, where parts of your nose tissues can die, and it may never function the same.
Secondly, Brazilian butt lifts, another strong contender in the cosmetic surgery boom, are cautioned by surgeons due to the sheer amount of botched jobs. The procedure has an estimated mortality rate of 1 in 3,000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Nerve damage, blood clots and organ perforation, too, are all very real risks from a variety of procedures to otherwise healthy bodies.
These operations are a romanticized version of self-harm that a slim number of young women have the gall to say, “fuck this” to. With every passing girl that I see who ruins her body, it further propagates the message that all of us women should do the same – whether the girl realizes it or not.
The claim that these patients can assuage their confidence or acquire self-love is a total crockpot of lies. It’s in the same vein as eating disorders: “If I just lost X amount of weight, then I can truly accept myself.” In fact, this kind of thinking is common with young adults. The majority of young adults with positive attitudes towards cosmetic procedures boil down to two main reasons: 40.2% aim to increase self-esteem and 45.1% aim to “feel better” in general.
However, according to Gardner-Webb University, “Having had previous cosmetic surgery is a predictor for the likelihood of having future procedures.” And these repeat surgeries occur in approximately 40% of cosmetic surgery patients and 60% of minimally invasive procedure patients. So, given the number of returning customers, plastic surgery being the cure-all for poor self-esteem and self-love is fallacious thinking.
I, too, once fell for the propaganda that if my chest perkily cleaved like an overripe orange I would be “happier” and “like myself more.” But I soon realized that I was critiquing myself through the lens of a misogynistic, adolescent boy who doesn’t understand basic anatomy. Our bodies — our anatomy — are intrinsic to our survival. So why is it so radical to celebrate them as they are, for the mere fact that they keep us alive?
Beauty and body trends have changed for millennia. There isn’t a single body type that wasn’t worshiped, and there isn’t a single feature universally loathed. We can see this in the variability of the kinds of people we see everywhere, every day. Love was made with your version of ugly and your version of beautiful. But if this god-awful trend picks up pace, everyone will look the same, and that isn’t beautiful.
If this trend does pick up the pace, though, I sure hope literature will keep up with it. “Her countenance of sheer, prepossessing plastic entranced Mr. Rochester.” How romantic.
