This is a beautiful piece. Our concepts of beauty are so strange because they are driven so much by celebrities. I said once that I have no idea what a Kardashian is, but they don’t deliver my mail or pick up my trash. My heroes, when I was growing up in Baltimore, were all the wonderful workers who got stuff done, the garbage man (when I was very small, I thought they were heroes; I’m not sure that was wrong), the arabbers who brought vegetables to our house, the fire fighters. I still think that ordinary workers are the core of our civilization.
I have some experience with plastic surgery, not as a patient but as a surgical technician at Hopkins. I specialized in cardiac and chest surgery, but occasionally had to scrub on plastic cases. Many of these surgeries were heroic - fixing the face of a little boy ho’d been in an accident, or a girl born with a facial deformity. We did a few cosmetic surgeries, but not many. We need to change our culture to stop worshipping the perfect face and figure of a rich celebrity and learn to love each other for who we are, unedited.
Thanks for mentioning the positive aspects of plastic surgery. If only all the money spent on superficial plastic surgery was donated towards people who truly needed it; that would be amazing.
this was such a good and healing read for me because it kind of crystalised the thoughts i had watching the same plastic surgery youtuber. as i was watching her i was worried the content would push me towards wanting plastic surgery myself (or even just being dissatisfied w my own face) but it actually did the opposite - i now know that, for example, it's not that i have a uniquely big and bulky nose, it's that no one in hollywood can leave their noses alone. or it's not that i havent had enough of a glowup as i hit adulthood, but it's just that my face did the work to settle into that of an adult on its own (which i am proud of! i am happy that bouncers dont suspiciously double-check my ID anymore, and that my grandma mistakenly calls me by my mum's name, and that i'm getting the same forehead wrinkles as my dad because we're both over-expressive over-explainers). and now that i can spot plastic surgery way better on the internet and in real life, it makes that weird longing-for-an-unfulfilled-potential-for-beauty way less important to me - like the way i dont say 'it's a shame i didn't inherit my grandma's big lips anymore', because i now know she fills them up with juvaderm lmao. but yeah its a thin line w that content - it helps me look past the beauty-propaganda of the internet, but if i consume too much of it at once, it drives me into this overly analytical place where i think too much abt my own appearance, and that usually isn't too good for me either. im not sure if the watching itself as an activity is beneficial to me - maybe just the expertise i gain after watching
Thank you so much Kira for your reflection. As you can tell, I feel equally ambivalent. In a way I think it's nice for me to be able to say to myself: this is what I look like, and it's not too different from what celebrities would look like if they didn't get face lifts and plastic surgery. I almost feel proud of not having it. But it also just makes me sad. Ultimately I guess it's like everything...taken in moderation it's okay! But watching the videos back to back makes the world feel like a dystopia lol, and I agree that it does just have the effect of placing an emphasis on appearance rather than other (more important) factors.
This is a beautiful piece. Our concepts of beauty are so strange because they are driven so much by celebrities. I said once that I have no idea what a Kardashian is, but they don’t deliver my mail or pick up my trash. My heroes, when I was growing up in Baltimore, were all the wonderful workers who got stuff done, the garbage man (when I was very small, I thought they were heroes; I’m not sure that was wrong), the arabbers who brought vegetables to our house, the fire fighters. I still think that ordinary workers are the core of our civilization.
I have some experience with plastic surgery, not as a patient but as a surgical technician at Hopkins. I specialized in cardiac and chest surgery, but occasionally had to scrub on plastic cases. Many of these surgeries were heroic - fixing the face of a little boy ho’d been in an accident, or a girl born with a facial deformity. We did a few cosmetic surgeries, but not many. We need to change our culture to stop worshipping the perfect face and figure of a rich celebrity and learn to love each other for who we are, unedited.
Thanks for mentioning the positive aspects of plastic surgery. If only all the money spent on superficial plastic surgery was donated towards people who truly needed it; that would be amazing.
this was such a good and healing read for me because it kind of crystalised the thoughts i had watching the same plastic surgery youtuber. as i was watching her i was worried the content would push me towards wanting plastic surgery myself (or even just being dissatisfied w my own face) but it actually did the opposite - i now know that, for example, it's not that i have a uniquely big and bulky nose, it's that no one in hollywood can leave their noses alone. or it's not that i havent had enough of a glowup as i hit adulthood, but it's just that my face did the work to settle into that of an adult on its own (which i am proud of! i am happy that bouncers dont suspiciously double-check my ID anymore, and that my grandma mistakenly calls me by my mum's name, and that i'm getting the same forehead wrinkles as my dad because we're both over-expressive over-explainers). and now that i can spot plastic surgery way better on the internet and in real life, it makes that weird longing-for-an-unfulfilled-potential-for-beauty way less important to me - like the way i dont say 'it's a shame i didn't inherit my grandma's big lips anymore', because i now know she fills them up with juvaderm lmao. but yeah its a thin line w that content - it helps me look past the beauty-propaganda of the internet, but if i consume too much of it at once, it drives me into this overly analytical place where i think too much abt my own appearance, and that usually isn't too good for me either. im not sure if the watching itself as an activity is beneficial to me - maybe just the expertise i gain after watching
Thank you so much Kira for your reflection. As you can tell, I feel equally ambivalent. In a way I think it's nice for me to be able to say to myself: this is what I look like, and it's not too different from what celebrities would look like if they didn't get face lifts and plastic surgery. I almost feel proud of not having it. But it also just makes me sad. Ultimately I guess it's like everything...taken in moderation it's okay! But watching the videos back to back makes the world feel like a dystopia lol, and I agree that it does just have the effect of placing an emphasis on appearance rather than other (more important) factors.