Hillary Reburn
Professor Childree
ENG 1233
23 September 2014
Undergoing the Knife
Plastic Surgery is at an all-time high in today’s generation. “Over all there has been a dramatic, average increase of 26 percent in the performance of the top three procedures over the past year” (“Increasing Popularity”). Liposuction, Breast Augmentation and Eye Lid Surgery are of the top three chosen procedures for both male and female genders. Plastic surgery has been an argument for decades; society has made it a social norm, but now health risk and the biblical principles one stands on argue every point society tries to stand for.
In the past, a woman’s beautiful physic depended on her bodies’ curves and her child-bearing abilities. “A woman’s body with a round, soft stomach and a full bottom that signifies reproduction was considered as beauty. Today, a thin, firm body with full breasts and a tight bottom is the ideal body” (Lee 504). Society has constructed woman’s views on their body to constantly be changing and improving and this is resulting in the constant fear of never being good enough. ”Our culture has taught women to constantly monitor their bodies as objects of imperfection and to pursue improvements because, compared to the ideal body, women’s bodies are naturally flawed” (Bordo 1993) (Lee 504).
Plastic Surgery started in World War I as a result of wounded veterans, and has quickly spiraled out of control to fit the needs of our society. ”In the affluence of the postwar era, however, plastic surgery broke through the barrier of reconstructive surgery to the new definition of esthetic surgery to beautify patients’ appearance rather than restore their dysfunctional bodies” (Lee 5-5). As our Society continues to change, we must ask ourselves: “when will enough be enough?”. As plastic surgery rapidly increases in today’s population, health hazards have been