fatherly love

Celebrity Plastic Surgery Makes Headlines

When I was a teenager no one I knew had a surgically altered face. Plastic surgery was practically unheard of while growing up in Oklahoma with the nearest city twenty miles away; the only people we saw were those from our small, farming community and the women there rarely colored their gray hair.

The popular celebrities of the day did not have surgically altered faces yet we knew they were thin and beautiful and we wanted to look just like them.

That desire to emulate celebrities has not changed as we see non-celebrities from every part of the world dressing and copying their styles of clothing, buying and wearing celebrity named fragrances and some wannabes have even resorted to plastic surgery to imitate their favorite celebrity's faces.

Celebrities have been considered our royalty and we usually put a lot of trust in them; in fact, there is an implied consent that whatever they do is probably ok so if the celebs are busy chasing the elusive fountain of youth using surgical enhancements and injections that plump and paralyze, the hanger-ons are probably doing the same. Consider this: when celebrities sport plumped up cheeks and big lips, it's not long before the fans are flocking to imitate the look. Whether the fans go for the Jennifer Aniston hair, Heidi's breasts, the Angelina lips or the lifted derriere of Kim Kardashian, you can be certain that these enhanced attributes will not go unnoticed by their adoring admirers.

Celebrity Plastic Surgery And The Collective Obsession With Youthful Perfection

Plastic surgery is all too obviously a big part of celebrity culture today. From reality stars to comedians to screen actors and stage performers. It seems that everyday we read about or see new pictures of some star that has gone too far and pushed the limits of what an ethical plastic surgeon should be willing to do.

The force behind this Hollywood celebrity trend to use plastic surgery beyond what is rational is a collective obsession with youthful perfection. That is, in American culture, youth is romanticized and physical perfection is idealized. The problem is that we are only young for a brief time in reality. Indeed, this evanescent quality is probably an ingredient of the fuel feeding this obsession. Combine this with the fact that very few, if any of us, are genetically perfect and you end up with a majority of the country somewhat unsatisfied with their appearance. Add to the fire, the pressure celebrities are under to be examples of perfection to those who consume their movies, TV shows, and music videos and you can imagine the desperate feelings these people have to hold on to this image of perfection or lose their celebrity status.

Further complicating the mix is that the personalities who go into that line of work tend to already enjoy some degree of narcissism with their coffee and you have a perfect storm. Nowhere do we see example after example of drastic measures taken by desperate souls to enhance or hold onto any shred of perfect youth that medical science might be able to offer. Likewise, nowhere else do we see so many sad cases of the fuel of this collective obsession with youthful perfection igniting the fire that ends in plastic surgery disasters, the likes of which we are all too familiar from watching late night TV.