The Pros And Cons Of Plastic Surgery

“A miracle, a life-changing phenomenon!” Those are the words that are spewed across the Korean plastic surgery program Let Me In, which has seen mass popularity for three airing-seasons. Nowadays, media has seen rises in such variety shows that promote plastic surgery usage to attain beauty, amongst those are The Swan and Botched. These shows often oversimplify and normalise procedures, thus fuelling societal acceptance. This is paramount to the increasing hype for aesthetic enhancement, evidently manifested in the surge of cosmetic procedures worldwide of up to 15.1 million in 2013, provided by International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS). These aesthetic enhancements refer to the improvement of one’s appearance such as abdominoplasty

As with the increase in cosmetic procedures, the cosmetic surgery industry is also growing. Regrettably, regulations on doctor’s license and credentials are often undermined. There lies a concern firstly, in the ethicality of surgeons, whether they place greater emphasis of business profit over patients’ concerns. While patients often have in mind what procedures they want, an educated layman may not fully understand the scientific procedure, its risks or its suitability for themselves. Under the push of being more competitive, surgeons may tend to dismiss considering patients’ suitability and trivialise the risks to make it more appealing to patients. Apart from that, the competitive setting of the industry also raises morally doubtful strategies that hinder patients’ choices. It is evident with the increasing socially irresponsible advertising practices such as time-limited and package deals of ‘couple’, ’mother-daughter’ or even ‘holiday-special-price’. These often pressurises patients into making a rushed and compromised decisions on an impulse. All the mentioned factors may thus affect the patients’ ability to make the right decision. In my own opinion, such application of science shouldn’t be thrown into a field of ambiguity, especially when it has the

Presently, media which normalises aesthetic enhancements are blamed for pushing teenagers into seeking aesthetic enhancement to achieve ideal looks. A 2013 report by National Health Service found that around half of the girls surveyed, aged seven to sixteen, felt stressed to look like celebrities, and are in favour of undergoing enhancements. This breeds a serious concern as it builds a wrong mind-set in young children about the beauty definition and the method to obtain it. In order to ameliorate this issue, such application of science should be ceased, before exposing children into such