"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."
-Marilyn Monroe
Is cosmetic surgery just a way to "fix" our flaws?
A 2004 study shows that over 11.9 million cosmetic procedures were performed in that year alone. This is nearly a forty-four percent increase since 2003.
The debate about plastic surgery has been a controversy ever since it's been around; everyone feels differently about the subject. Some people feel its simply a way to express oneself, like makeup or body modification (tattoos, piercings, etc.), and some people feel as if it's unhealthy and a gateway to a never-ending addiction to "fixing" oneself, also know as perfectionism. Some love it and some feel that it should have never been invented, but to be quite honest, it's not such a horrible thing, especially in today's society. The only problem is that it has been taken too far, like with things such as breast implants and tummy tucks.
Some people are born with abnormalities that truly make them self-conscious, and cosmetic surgery helps those people with coming out of themselves and being confident. But today, things have gone too far. It's become a normal thing to "adjust" your body in ways it shouldn't be "adjusted". Things have gotten far out of hand in terms of plastic surgery, and studies have proven links between body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and plastic surgery. Numerous studies show that seven to thirteen cosmetic surgery patients have been diagnosed with a form of BDD.
Bulimia Nervosa has been the most common eating disorder among links cosmetic surgery because of a desire to "alter" their appearance until they reach a widely unattainable goal.
A recent study at the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium distributed surveys on BDD to 266 patients seeking rhinoplasty over a sixteen month period; twenty percent of the patients had previously undergone the procedure. The study suggests that thirty-three percent of the patients had symptoms of BDD, which rose to a high forty-three percent of patients who were seeking the procedure for purely aesthetic reasons.
Over-the-top cosmetic procedures can not only lead to an eating disorder such as Bulimia, but they can also be quite dangerous in terms of medical health.
Surgery, no matter what the type, is always a dangerous procedure. There may be risks with things like anesthesia, necrosis and nerve damage. Let alone those dangers, there is also a risk of a procedure being unsuccessful or a patient being unsatisfied. Cosmetic procedures, on average, are expensive, painful and time-consuming, and when one goes through all of that just to be dissatisfied because of an unsuccessful procedure, it takes a big psychological toll.
In this Geico commercial, a man is followed around by three "popular" middle school girls for a means of dieting in order to save money.
This advertisement portrays numerous negative ideas; it's supposed to be funny, but instead, it's actually pretty sad. The character of the man is displaying an idea of losing weight at all costs, which is bad, but what makes it horrible is how the young girls are involved and displayed.
The commercial simply gives a bad reputation to middle school girls. The young girls are helping the man with starvation by bothering him about the "gross" food. These are the main characteristics of Anorexia Nervosa. So, is this commercial really portraying teenage girls that are "popular" as Anorexics?
The last thing that needs to happen is for girls to see this and think about being "popular" and associating it with ideas like these. Popular is a good thing to young girls, and there's nothing wrong with that, but the message here is that in the "popular group," food is shameful and you will get criticized for eating.
Young people grow up surrounded by influences that food is "gross" and shameful. It's the media who taught them that and it's the media that's giving them a bad reputation.
There is a difference between motivation and shaming, which is something that the people behind The Biggest Loser don't understand.
The problem with The Biggest Loser is that it displays the exact opposite of motivation. The NBC program promotes the idea the that equals healthy, which is not true, and this is just the beginning of the show's display of unhealthy promotion.
"The Biggest Loser is another unrealistic 'reality' show," said Dr. Laura Machado of Sacramento in a recent Doctors of Weight Loss post. "The fact that people who suffer from obesity can lose large amounts of weight rapidly is nothing new. We evaluate every day who have achieved massive weight loss in the past, often on multiple occasions, only to regain the weight. Their propensity to be overweight is inherent and only permanently addressed with the anatomical changes that surgery offers. In medicine, we practice evidence-based treatments. Medicine has nothing to do with television ratings."
Rachel Frederickson, the recent Biggest Loser "winner," returned from the show weighing only 105 pounds after losing 155 pounds during the show. Frederickson had lost sixty percent of her body weight in a matter of less than a five month period and according to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, at a BMI of 17.5, she is now considered underweight.
"When I was watching the show, at first I didn't think she was one of the contestants to be honest, said celebrity nutritionist Christine Avanti. "She looked thin, especially from the waist up."
And what kind of message is this sending? That it's easy to lose that drastic amount of weight in such a short period of time to become as much as underweight?
A Montclair-based psychotherapist who specializes in eating disorders, Beth McGovern expresses her concern for the message that Frederickson's weight loss could be sending to the people.
"It clearly is going to trigger them to think, 'OK, she can do that. I should be able to do that,' " said McGovern. "It presents a bad message to young women to see someone who looks somewhat malnourished... Being rewarded."
Another former contestant of the show agrees.
Season three contestant, Kai Hibbard, who lost 118 pounds was adamant about the fact that the the program is hurting it's contestants and promoting unhealthy body image.
"I have people come up to me and talk to me and ask me why they can't lose twelve pounds in a week when I did. It didn't happen. It's TV... a week is not a week in TV," said Hibbard. "I left with a very poor mental body image. I found myself loathing what I looked like the more weight that I dropped because of the pressure on me."
Hibbard told CBS' The Early Show that after the show, six other former contestants had said something similar. She also admitted that she had suffered from an eating disorder after leaving the show.
Disturbingly, the antics don't stop here. We're adding children into the mix! The TV program with the purpose of starving and humiliating overweight people in a contest of 'whoever ends up the skinniest' is beginning to add children. In fact, some of it's new contestants as young as only thirteen years old.
Last season, the show added three overweight children -- Lindsay, Sunny and Biingo. In The Biggest Loser's promotions, it may seem as if it's a good thing -- as if it will teach the kids how to eat healthy and exercise -- but you don't see the ugly.
What this does to kids is not only humiliates them... on national television, but it teaches to compete. This competition is comparing the way they look, and the one that looks the best -- or is the skinniest, I should say -- wins. This is showing children everywhere that the skinniest is the best, and for that, they get a grand prize of a bunch of money. The moral here: life is a competition based on looks, the skinniest looks the best, and gets a bunch of money. And how is this good for children?
The list goes on, so it's not difficult to say that it's means like these that are diminishing society's approach toward positive body image. Of course, good eating and exercise -- health -- is important, but slowly but surely, society is losing the real meaning of health. Instead of promoting healthy, this TV program is only a pathway of manipulation to promote diet products and obtain weight loss, even if it's not in a healthy way. It's obviously damaging to not only contestants, but viewers everywhere.
