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Plastic fantastic: What happened to our idea of beauty?
Plastic surgery, hair extensions, fake eyelashes, caked-up makeup and lip and butt fillers; the world has gone fake.
The idea of beauty nowadays is simple: the more plastic, the better.
The idea of beauty in today’s world is often defined by the beauty authorities, such as fashion designers and fashion gurus, celebrities and the media (or at least what the media decide to show us).
Societal standards have been twisted and manipulated, becoming unrealistic and very hard to achieve. Celebrities like the Kardashians, whose plastic surgeries have become an integral part of their lives, give others the wrong perception of what women should look like - for example, having an ass five times bigger than the waist.
And no, we don’t believe that they’ve achieved this by doing a lot of waist-training exercises.
With such a big influence from celebrities, no wonder more and more young girls are deciding to go under the knife to conform or to simply change something on their body out of boredom.
“Plastic surgeries and corrections are becoming more and more popular each year and demands for more complicated operations have grown too,” says Mabroor Bhatty, a plastic and reconstructive aesthetic surgeon from Westbourne Centre in Birmingham.
In his opinion, aesthetic corrections are an amazing tool to make people happy and more confident, when done right that is.
While some people use the opportunity of plastic surgeries to enhance their image, some of them just want to get rid of scars and veins.
“Plastic surgery doesn’t necessarily mean breast implants or lip fillers. Most of the corrections we do are associated with aging or scar removals,” says Mr. Bhatty.
However, plastic surgeries, just like tattoos, can be very addictive and some people can totally lose control, some even becoming addicted to surgery. Examples of this include women wanting to have their breasts enlarged three times or their lips filled up to 2 ml, resulting into unwanted “trout pouts”.
Jenny Balanici is a 20-year-old student at Queen Mary University, who despite her young age has had three surgeries already. Jenny has had a nose job, lips fillers and boobs made bigger - up to two cup sizes.
“I wasn’t feeling very happy with my appearance. The problem got bigger when I lost weight. I was very skinny with no boobs and my nose stood out too much,” says Jenny.
She got her first surgery, her nose job, when she was only 18 years old. However, after going under the knife three times and paying more than £5,000, she is now almost happy with her looks.
“I would like to redo my nose in the future, because I’m still not satisfied with it,” she adds.
While to some people this might sound exaggerated and extreme, there is also the opposite way to look at this issue. Why not change what you can?
“I would say that if you don’t feel good about your body, you should definitely change it. It gives you more confidence and makes you happy,” adds Jenny, in pure confidence.
Ollie Davis, a 25-year-old PHD student at Imperial College in London shared his opinion on “plastic Barbie girls”: “I think that everything that’s fake is just horrible. Men don’t like the feeling of fake breasts, too much make-up or huge, unnatural lips. Wake up girls!”
If you’re among the declining number of women who still consider natural beauty important and valuable, you’re not the only one. Men all around the world still value real women and Kendrick Lammar’s song ‘Humble’: “Give me something natural like ass with some stretchmarks” proves it all.
