http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/30/free-plastic-surgery-for-bullied-kids/?iref=allsearch
In Chapter six of “Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life,” the author discusses managing impressions and how we form impressions of others. The way we first view a person is usually by physical appearance. By the way someone looks, we assume how their personality is and if we like them or not. How we appear to other people has become extremely important to us, that we tend to shape and alter our image in order to impress other individuals. I believe that the media, standards of society, and the opinions of others has made people obsessive over physical appearance to the point where it isn’t healthy. One way individuals, mainly woman, alter their looks is through plastic surgery. The increase of plastic surgery being used to change how we look proves that many of us aren’t content with how we appear to others. Society’s standards of what beauty is tends to be what causes us to feel insecure about our looks and change our image to seem physically pleasant to another person’s eyes.
In this video, it shows a young adult that faces bullying based on her physical appearance and her desire to get her ears fixed due to the name calling. The video mentions that there is a cosmetic surgery firm that is willing to perform plastic surgery for kids that suffer from bullying. I think that allowing kids to change their appearance gives them the idea that in the situation of the bullied and the one bullying, the one being bullied is at fault for what is happening. Before changing a child’s appearance it’s important to encourage them that we all have our imperfections that make us who we are. This video represents the fact that we are all wrapped up with society’s standards and that we should change ourselves based on other people’s opinions. Personally, I feel as if getting plastic surgery under the age of twenty-one is too soon because a lot of us don’t grow into our features until our later teenage years or even early twenties. By allowing these children to get plastic surgery, we’re giving into society’s standards of what is considered beauty and letting the eyes’ of other individuals control how we look or how we are meant to look. Although, the young adult in the video says she is much happier, I believe it’s too much, too soon.
This is an interesting article. As a person who went through facial plastic surgery in my teens, I agree with your point that we should be more careful and thoughtful about teens plastice surgery becuase not only teens are yet physically mature, but a human being is an imperfect creature.
We all know plastic surgery is potentially dangerous and it could ruin one’s rest of life if anything goes wrong, and especially the risk increases if you’re in teens. But teens tend to overlook the risk of surgery and potential side effects even though there are undeniable facts that shouldn’t be ignored.
In my experience, I didn’t really care about the side effect things. All I wanted was to have better look to attract othere’s attention. By the time, I saw many girls had cosmetic operation secretly and I didn’t want to get left behind. And I knew society would pay more attetion to the one has better look. I felt I should keep up with this trend in order to not lose self esteem. I was just turning to 18 and the operation was super scary. All I was thinking during the operation was “Okay, I’m no longer behind”. It wasn’t much about teen girl’s desire for beauty, I would say, it was more about surviving in this society.
Well, this is true that society prefers nice looking people than just normal looking people. And I’m for having cosmetic plastic surgery if it helps yourself find better life.
But at the same time, we should be more responsible for our children. We should watch them make right decision and help them have a correct understanding of cosmetic plastic surgery. And above all things, we should step away from an appearance-oriented society where people are judged more for their physical appearance than their actual characteristic.