Beauty culture is highly prevalent in modern times. We see its influences every day of our lives. We value beauty higher than we value health. The advantages that physical beauty will get us in life are impressed upon us from the time that we are small children. We are lead to understand that beautiful people are admired, rewarded and superior, while unattractive people are offensive, unappreciated and useless. We give our children role models of petite, angelic female figures and muscular, strong male figures and influence them to aspire to these ideals. This obsessive value we place on beauty is damaging to our psyches and deteriorating to our morality.
The reasons that people get carried away with plastic surgery are complex in nature, but one cannot discuss plastic surgery obsession and not make mention of the vanity that is so common to our culture. This is not to say that anyone who has taken plastic surgery and cosmetic alterations too far is vain. There are a number of reasons people use these procedures in excess, many of which are tied to legitimate mental health problems. However, our societal trends of obsessive beauty culture and focus on self image that informs our vanity is certainly contributing to the problem.
When it comes to cosmetic procedures like plastic surgery, beauty culture informs us that we would be better off if our noses were just that much smaller or lips that much fuller. It influences us to believe that plastic surgery can help us attain the level of perfection that we are seeking in our appearances. This prompts people to do things like spend their children’s college funds on plastic surgery for themselves, receive so many cosmetic alterations that their faces look more like masks than actual faces and spend their entire existences pursuing a level of physical perfection that does not exist. This side of beauty culture is toxic and harmful to people of all ages and should be eradicated.