It is practically impossible to open a social media app without being flooded with photos of people who have undergone cosmetic surgery and have nothing but rave reviews for it. These living advertisements inform you of a myriad of insecurities that you should have. After scrolling through these perfect faces and bodies for hours on end every day, you begin to ask yourself why you live with your imperfect self when you could simply design a new look. Lip fillers, Brazilian Butt Lifts, lip flips, buccal fat removal, nose jobs — the enticing list goes on and on.
Using plastic surgery to modify one’s appearance for purely cosmetic reasons upholds societal constructs and ideas that are often dangerous. Everyone who chooses to have cosmetic surgery should reflect on the true reason why they want to change their appearance. The true blame in creating and upholding beauty standards lies in underlying societal power structures and the companies that sustain them.
Society constructs the idea of beauty; no human is born with an innate definition of what is considered beautiful or ugly. Throughout the years, just like trends in fashion and media, certain features of the human body go in and out of style as the societal definition of “beautiful” shifts. For example, in the early 2000’s, the prime beauty standard for women was extremely skinny, pale skin and small facial features. In contrast, the present beauty standard consists of a curvaceous body, with artificially tanned skin, full lips and big eyes.
When discussing beauty standards, especially the beauty standards of the modern world, we must analyze how race plays a role in what we consider beautiful. Today’s beauty standard is centered on features usually naturally found on women of color, specifically Black women. Historically, Black women have been ridiculed and discriminated against for having dark skin, bigger lips and more curvaceous bodies.
Leah Donnella shares on her NPR podcast “Is Beauty in the Eyes of the Colonizer?”, “If you go back and look at the work of some early racial theorists . . . they defined the category of ‘white,’ or ‘Caucasian,’ as being the most beautiful of the races . . . There’s a reason that so many people still think of an ‘all-American beauty’ as a thin, blonde, blue-eyed white woman.” Consequently, the beauty standard has been upheld and weaponized against Black women. However, if you place the features that Black women have been victimized for throughout history on a white woman today, she would be the epitome of beauty through the lens of the modern beauty standard.
The celebration of features on white women that have been looked down upon in Black women speaks to racial power structures that the Western standard of beauty has been founded upon. When the beauty standard inevitably shifts and turns into a different set of ideals, these features will no longer be celebrated, even though they naturally occur most often on Black women. People will no longer consider these features to be “in style,” and people who naturally possess these features will go back to being looked down on. The treatment of female bodies as beauty trends upholds the idea that women, especially women of color, are commodities that only exist to be manipulated by the more powerful members of society.
As beauty standards morph and change, a variety of societal structures are in place to reinforce these new ideals. Namely, popular culture and the fashion and makeup industries all work together to cement the idea that women can achieve the “perfect look” and finally feel truly beautiful.
However, this idea of achievable perfection completely clashes with the ever-changing nature of the beauty standard. It is impossible for a person to consistently embody beauty standards when the standard is constantly undergoing transformations. This insurmountable conflict between people’s desire to look perfect and the impossibility of doing so is where plastic surgery marketing thrives.
Cosmetic surgery presents itself as a way of reaching this idea of perfection by altering one’s natural appearance. As these surgical procedures have become more normalized by society, more people make the choice to get surgery to achieve the standard of the moment. The models and actresses we see in the media are all beginning to look more alike, as they undergo more procedures in the race to perfection. The idea of beauty in individuality has begun to die. This influences how we view beauty in ourselves and in others in our day-to-day lives. Rather than celebrating our unique features, we as a society work to erase our individualities as fast as we can, in hopes of being considered beautiful.
People start undergoing these procedures, but none of them are enough to keep up with what is considered beautiful. Each procedure highlights a new imperfection. As time passes, the reflection in the mirror becomes completely unrecognizable and unsatisfactory, and yet it is the face and body as a million different people.
Cosmetic surgeries are a tool that are used to uphold power structures and make individuals feel that their uniqueness is a hindrance. We are taught that we need to pay large sums of money and drastically change who we naturally are in order to be perfect and beautiful. However, “perfect” and “beautiful” are arbitrarily defined concepts with definitions that are constantly shifting in order to generate the most profit for beauty companies. The only benefit women obtain from these procedures is the ability to fit in with a damaging and dangerous culture. The people that truly benefit from the existence of cosmetic surgeries are the companies that are commodifying bodies and selling self-hatred. We are taught by them to feel ashamed and hateful towards ourselves so that we let societal power structures hold us down. Rejecting the normalization of cosmetic surgery is a way to regain one’s own power.