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.