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Science Forum Index » Medicine - Nursing Forum » Fix Me: Nips and Tucks Soar
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| Author |
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| Ilena Rose |
 Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 6:59 pm |
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From Health Lover, Ilena Rosenthal:
http://ilenarose.blogspot.com
EXCERPT:
Today's cosmetic surgery can give a person a cuter nose and sexier
thighs. Research has shown people feel better about the body part they
had fixed, said psychologist Diana Zuckerman, president of the
National Research Center for Women & Families. But, she added, there
isn't as much hard evidence for whether self-esteem or even a career
get a boost.
One past study found that nearly 90 percent of patients reported
satisfaction a year after receiving cosmetic surgeries, including
boosted overall body image.
"There's this idea that if you look better you'll be happier. You'll
feel better about yourself," Zuckerman said, "and logically that makes
so much sense because we live in a society where people do care what
you look like." But there are limits to what surgery can do.
http://www.livescience.com/health/080415-crimes-against-nature.html
Fix Me: Nips and Tucks Soar
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer
When it comes to rearranging looks, Michael Jaskson is, well, a
great musician. Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant.
Cosmetic surgery can go bad, as appears to be the case with
Priscilla Presley.
Pamela Anderson, the poster girl for bodily enhancement, displays
more than one aftermarket part. Credit: AP Photo.
Liposuction. Boob jobs. Lip-plumping Botox. Pec implants to die for.
These are a few of our favorite beauty enhancers.
Sure, cosmetic procedures go awry, as seen lately with Priscilla
Presley whose botched silicone injections have sent her jaw and lower
face sagging. And people have died from minor plastic surgeries or
reactions to higher-risk procedures such as liposuction.
Nonetheless, beauty-upgrades are "skyrocketing," said Dr. Angelo
Volandes of Massachusetts General Hospital, whose specialty is
internal medicine. His research focuses on contemporary ethical issues
in medicine. Requests for cosmetic enhancements are "really hitting
our offices all around the country. It's not just this rare occurrence
you get once in a blue moon." Often the plastic surgeon needs
clearance from a primary doctor, he said.
In 2007, Americans spent more than $13 billion for nearly 11.7 million
cosmetic procedures, according to the American Society for Aesthetic
Plastic Surgery. That's up from nearly 8.5 million procedures in 2001.
Women and men are flocking to doctors' offices to get rid of "ugly"
features and improve the "so-so" ones. They are driven by self-esteem
issues, the desire to fit into an image-conscious society, perhaps
vanity and even career and romance opportunities.
Of course body modifications date back thousands of years. From head
reshaping and neck elongating to body painting and tattooing, body
enhancements are a part of every culture. They can signal an
individual's place in society, mark a special moment, or simply fit in
with the latest fashion.
The jury is out on whether the latest nips and tucks, when done to
climb social ladders, gain access to better jobs or better mates,
actually work. But in a society focused on image, scientists have
established that looks matter:
Cosmetic must-haves
Since 1997, surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures have
increased more than 450 percent in the United States.
While women have been the most typical connoisseurs of tummy tucks and
facelifts, men have jumped on the vanity train, as the figures below
from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery indicate.
Women's top-five cosmetic surgical procedures for 2007:
* Breast augmentation: 399,440 procedures
* Liposuction: 398,848
* Eyelid surgery: 208,199
* Tummy tuck: 180,457
* Breast reduction: 153,087
Men's top-five cosmetic surgical procedures for 2007:
* Liposuction: 57,980 procedures
* Eyelid surgery: 32,564
* Nose reshaping: 31,713
* Breast reduction: 20,280
* Hair transplantation: 16,491
The No. 1 non-surgical cosmetic procedure for U.S. men and women last
year was Botox injection, with more than nearly 3 million procedures
overall.
The latest twists
While liposuction is one of the chart toppers for cosmetic surgeries,
Volandes said gastric bypass surgeries are becoming increasingly
popular for a new set of dieters. "It is a procedure that was intended
for people who are very, very morbidly obese, and now we're seeing it
in people who are in the high 100's and who might be 5 foot 2." He
added, "There are real risks here."
Another alarmingly popular and invasive procedure these days could be
called a Jimmy-Choo fix. Cosmetic toe modification is a solution
chosen by some women who want to squeeze into high heels with narrow
toes and heels. The majority of women that podiatric surgeon Suzanne
Levine sees at her Manhattan office come in with hammertoes in which
the foot curves inward. The answer can be Botox injections to loosen
up the muscles pulling on the toe or, more dramatically, a surgical
shaving down of the bones of the second and third toes.
Many women wear spike heels in spite of the pain for the overall
slenderizing effect of wearing heels; they make a woman look more
petite and feminine. "It's more aesthetically appealing when wearing
certain clothes," Levine said.
Toe cleavage, in which the pinky toe gets severed off, can also help
women slide into snazzy stilettos. This procedure can alleviate the
pain from too many hours in heels, which place most of your body
weight onto the ball of the foot and squeeze the toes together. Shoes
aside, the long-term result can be inward- or outward-pointing toes
and arthritis in the feet, Volandes said.
Another option would be to ditch the heels, of course. "But fashion
tastes are what they are," Volandes told LiveScience, "and people are
willing to go through extremes, and this is just one additional
extreme to be quite honest."
He refers to this as a Cinderella-type phenomenon. "If you are born an
envious stepsister with a wide foot, medicine can surgically enhance
you into a Cinderella so that your newly trimmed foot fits a narrow
glass slipper," Volandes wrote in a 2006 issue of the journal Medical
Humanities.
The new you?
Body embellishments are nothing new to human societies. What's in and
what's out, however, has changed throughout human history with big
breasts or small breasts, tiny waists or rolls of fat being prized or
scorned as the ultimate in beauty.
Today's cosmetic surgery can give a person a cuter nose and sexier
thighs. Research has shown people feel better about the body part they
had fixed, said psychologist Diana Zuckerman, president of the
National Research Center for Women & Families. But, she added, there
isn't as much hard evidence for whether self-esteem or even a career
get a boost.
One past study found that nearly 90 percent of patients reported
satisfaction a year after receiving cosmetic surgeries, including
boosted overall body image.
"There's this idea that if you look better you'll be happier. You'll
feel better about yourself," Zuckerman said, "and logically that makes
so much sense because we live in a society where people do care what
you look like." But there are limits to what surgery can do.
While physical attractiveness could woo a hot guy, for instance,
Zuckerman points out the difference between a "7" and an "8" on the
looks scale is not so noticeable to the eye. "Most people getting
cosmetic surgery don't go from being a 3 to being a 10," Zuckerman
said during a telephone interview. "People do have these unrealistic
expectations about how this is going to change their life and how it's
going to change how they feel about themselves."
Why do they do it?
It's easy to be shocked by the accelerating market for cosmetic
surgeries and enhancements, but the larger question is why people do
it. The reason is simple: The fairest of them all, at least by
advertising and marketing standards, is today's big celebrity on the
covers of glossy magazines and featured on "Entertainment Tonight."
"We are bombarded with images of people who've had plastic surgery,"
Zuckerman said, "and our sense of the ideal of what we're supposed to
look like is so unrealistic that you really can't achieve it without
plastic surgery." She noted, for instance, these ideals include a
"Barbie-doll body, which just about nobody has naturally, or a
60-year-old woman who looks 35."
Not even the stars can achieve perfection, hence the need for the
pit-crew of make-up and other stylists, the ideal lighting and then
the digital enhancements. Zuckerman calls this the trickle-down
effect, because it's the finished product seen by the everyday TV
watcher.
Back at the body level, not only aspiring actors or rich socialites
sign up for a boob job or pectoral implants. Psychological problems,
such as low self-esteem, depression and body-image disorders play a
role, say scientists.
Many people getting cosmetic procedures have an exaggerated sense of
their flaws and their appearance, a medical diagnosis called body
dysmorphic disorder (BDD), according to Zuckerman. "There's a tendency
that, now their hips are too big, their ears stick out or their chin
is too small," Zuckerman said.
Perhaps the most extreme case of BDD, she said, is Michael Jackson.
"There's a large psychological component, as you can imagine, to
this," Volandes said. "The toll that body image disorders can have on
people, this truly can be just as traumatic to people as physical
ailments." |
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