When it comes to people getting plastic surgery of all kinds, my views are pretty libertarian. If you’ve done your homework, you have reasons that make sense to you and you’ll take steps to ensure your safety — go for it. It’s your body, it’s your life, and you should decide what’s right.
But that doesn’t mean I personally believe all procedures are okay for everyone. There are plenty of times I’ve reacted to cosmetic surgery news with the ever articulate, “Huh?”
Knowing there definitely are times when I don’t think plastic surgery is a great idea, I’ve been searching for a logical place to draw the line; to come up with some sort of criteria for what’s reasonable. The old, “I’ll know it when I see it,” just doesn’t do it for me. As someone with a pretty decent understanding of the world of plastic surgery, at least for a layperson, I really want something more definitive than that.
“Huh?” was just the reaction I had when I read that a terminally ill woman planned to have surgery so she could look like Demi Moore. I thought about the tens of thousands of dollars this would cost and figured there might be a better use for the money — some kind of meaningful legacy, maybe?
I also wondered why this woman would subject herself to extra pain during this difficult time. But most of all, I marveled that someone living out her final days would choose to spend them looking like someone else. For goodness sake, why? Doesn’t it make more sense to live the last bit of time allotted to you on this earth, as, well, you?
That’s when it hit me. This is where I draw my own personal line between cosmetic surgery that makes sense to me and cosmetic surgery that doesn’t. If you want to change your physical self to attain some sort of ideal — a look you think embodies true beauty or epitomizes perfection — I wonder how happy you really are. And I probably won't applaud you for planning surgery. While I might agree that Angelina Jolie has great looking lips, I don't think that having someone else's lips will make you more content (even if I thought you could achieve them after seeing so many lip jobs gone oh so wrong). And Halle Berry has some of the best cheekbones ever, but that’s her good luck. I would never dream of advocating plastic surgery so we all can have them.
In my view it's clear: Mother Nature made us all wonderfully unique and that’s what we should celebrate. It may be natural to wish you had a few more physical gifts — we all do when bombarded with media images of that tiny percentage of people who are truly gorgeous. But really, we’re not all supposed to look like Demi Moore. We’re supposed to look like ourselves, pretty, plain or in between.
Tell me you’re generally okay with your looks and your life, but you’re thinking about breast augmentation to balance a pear-shaped figure. Or tell me you simply want to rejuvenate your face and roll back the clock a few years. Or even that you want some help getting your flat tummy back after childbearing. Great! Chances are, you will be very satisfied with what a talented plastic surgeon can do for you.
But tell me you’re considering a butt lift so your rear will look more like J-Lo’s, or you’re going to get chest implants so you can have six-pack abs like the guys at the gym . . . you already know what I’ll say.