Is Plastic Surgery the New Fad?

When it comes to beauty, it’s not hard to notice how modern society has altered our views on what’s hot and what’s not.  In the past, using cosmetics like makeup and hair dye in order to express beauty used to be reserved strictly for virtuous women. Even then, the application had to be discreet. On the other hand, teenage girls that were considered to be “pure,” were forbidden all together from even using makeup.

Compare that to today’s society that allows high school girls to get breast implants (with the parent’s consent of course), what went wrong? In fact, times have changed so much that if a woman goes out with no makeup, she would considered rude and careless by the public for not trying to hide her imperfections. Essentially, we’ve gone from perceiving beauty only for intimacy and perversion to seeing it as a way of fitting in society.

What caused such a drastic shift in what’s socially acceptable? One could blame social media for promoting narcissism or is it because the modern age has made healthy living a fashionable thing to do? But I think the real question here is simple: is plastic surgery the new fad?

Quite possibly.

The thing is beauty products have become such a staple that the next avant garde thing to do is now plastic surgery. In fact, getting some work done after pregnancy is almost as common as going on a honeymoon. Getting Botox and lip fillers are the talk of the day for the middle-aged members of the upper and middle classes. Being a fashion model or Hollywood celebrity would also mean that getting Botox, a nose job or breast implants is a necessity to stay on the cutting edge of the industry.

But is the modernization of our society really the one to blame? Even during humanity’s early days, we as a species have always been intrigued with body modification. It helped us distinguish our deeds, beliefs and social standings from one another. But with the advent of modern medical tools and techniques, humans have moved on from simply wearing animal hides and tattoos to getting silicone implants or using botulin toxins (Botox). Let’s face it body modification is in our genes!

So to answer our question, yes, plastic surgery is absolutely a new fad but it’s not due to modernization. Technical and medical advancements have only accelerated our insatiable thirst for body altering procedures. This has allowed more unusual procedures to be done such as silicone horns, split tongues and eyeball tattooing.

We are literally at a point in time where the advent of drastic and extreme body modification is being cultivated. Plastic surgery is just the beginning. Soon there will be even more bizzare body altering procedures, such as changing your ethnicity and permanently changing your hair color. And we aren’t too far off from that either. Already you can change your sexual orientation through surgery, complete with functioning private parts, so who’s to say in 20 years or so we can’t switch our racial orientation through surgical means as well?

Although our species have been familiar with body modification for thousands of years, we have never seen it integrated into society at this level and at such a massive scale where a 6 figure pay check can depend on whether you got that breast implant last season or not. These are truly interesting times we are living in and it is a thrill to anticipate just how much our society will change in the near future.

- KT