Plastic surgery- why do people opt for it?
There are a variety of reasons: proceducres can be medical, in order to fix something that may have been broken or damaged due to some sort of physical trauma. But many times plastic surgery is cosmetic, performed in order to change or enhance parts of one’s appearance. Everyone has different reasons as to why they go in for plastic surgery and there are also many different kinds of surgical procedures that can be performed.
Blepharoplasty, for example, is a surgery to repair drooped eyelids that may involve removing excess skin, muscle and fat, according to the Mayo Clinic. As you grow older, your eyelids stretch, the muscles weaken, and this can give you an older overall appearance. This underlying fear of an ageing physique and losing the freshness of youth is often cited by many as the core reason for wanting to alter their appearances.
In South Korea, blepharoplasty which is sometimes referred to as, “double eyelid surgery” is one of the most commonly performed plastic surgery procedures. Although according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, (ISAPS) as of 2015, the USA holds the highest number of surgical procedures overall, South Korea comes quite close, ranking third for the total number of procedures that same year.
Some believe that South Koreans opt for these procedures in order to look more “Westernized.” However, some that argue that you can’t attribute a certain aspect of appearance to the Western world because the Western world today itself is made up of a mix of people from all over the world who have appearances that differ in many different ways.
As globalization increases, cultural standards merge and the media landscape transforms, we can see changing and evolving standards of beauty. A major cause of plastic surgery, for example, is how media and its various platforms portray an ideal standard of beauty, therefore causing users to pick themselves apart for not aligning with a certain standard.
People will change parts of themselves in order to fit an “ideal” beauty standard, perhaps not understanding that there really is no “ideal” beauty standard, because the media is constantly portraying different ideals as the years go on. The idea of what is considered beautiful constantly changes and therefore there never really is, and shouldn’t be, a concrete standard to aspire to.
Plastic surgery is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. It is a sweeping generalization to definitively say that plastic surgery is something that is wholly positive or negative. What many argue about plastic surgery is that sometimes the driving force behind it is how media portrays beauty, allowing people to believe they have to look a certain way in order to be attractive or to fit in.
It’s important to realize that at the end of the day, it’s your choice whether or not you choose to go in for plastic surgery and that the concept of beauty is truly what you choose to make of it.