Scary Trends in Plastic Surgery

While browsing the Internet the past few days, I noticed several stories about plastic surgery. Two of these stories really caught my eye–one was about a little girl who underwent plastic surgery to avoid getting bullied and the second was about the use of Disney characters (or their near close identicals) to promote plastic surgery. Both of these stories reminded me of how out of control plastic surgery has gotten.

Nadia Ilse, age 14, recently got plastic surgery to help her stop the bullying she had experienced throughout her schooling. Nadia had an ear pinning surgery, a nose job and a chin alteration. The ear pinning surgery was most important to Nadia, she says, because it makes her ears stick out less. The foundation Little Baby Face, which pays for children with facial deformities to have plastic surgery to correct the problem, paid for Nadia to have the surgeries performed, which she says she begged her mother for since age 10. Nadia says that she was called "Dumbo" and "elephant ears" by her peers for years and now she is called beautiful. While Nadia may sound happy and satisfied with her new look, this type of "solution" to bullying sends a troublesome message to both the tormented and the tormentors. In the end, Nadia changed her body to prevent the bullying, which still makes her responsible for the bullying, rather than turning to the bullies to correct their bad behavior.

The second story involved the use of a buxom "Little Mermaid" look alike to promote plastic surgery in Venezuela.. Luckily, this type of blatant advertising hasn't made its way to the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if it inches its way closer. The ads specifically show Ariel visiting a much thinner Ursula (the evil octopus queen of the famed movie), lying on a surgery table, and emerging with a new set of legs. Others say that Ariel appears to have bigger breasts and a tighter face after the surgery. Considering that in 2010 alone, nearly 219,000 cosmetic surgeries were performed on teens age 13 to 19, these two stories seem to support the notion that plastic surgery is the answer for our children who haven't had the chance to learn to love themselves the way that they were made.