Plastic Surgery According to Culture

Cosmetic surgery is no longer just about fitting into your adopted culture. It's about fitting into your ethnic group without regard for what mainstream America might think is attractive. According to the New York Times, while "everyone wants a flat stomach and a smooth forehead," the similarities among various immigrant groups seeking plastic surgery end there.

Doctor observations show there is a split between two goals among self-improvement-seeking immigrants. Some seek procedures to obscure ethnic physical traits and other surgeries serve to emphasize features that retain cultural capital.

In, New York, Chinese women have been undergoing eyelid surgery to obtain an almond shaped eye and nose jobs to flip down their upturned noses. Koreans have also seen surgeons to have their jaw lines slimmed.  Other women wish to enhance the physical features that their cultures praise the most. Hispanic women who wish to accentuate their curves. To more specific Dominican women have requested butt lifts to enhance their voluptuous bodies.

The piece notably lacked any observations about the preferences of African immigrants, but in a 2010 study by the American Academy of Plastic Surgeons, the most commonly requested surgical procedure among African Americans was nose reshaping, followed by breast reduction and liposuction.

Today almost nothing is far from the ordinary but we still have difficulty accepting this stigmatized topic, plastic surgery. There exist various arguments for plastic surgery that exist within a woman’s world. For some women these surgical procedures serve as a correction tool over a physical trait they cannot control.

Opposing views see plastic surgery as self mutilation to quench society’s thirst for beauty and vanity.

Unfortunately an array of male and female celebrities have abused plastic surgery looking like shriveled up rag dolls. It is multimillion dollar disasters like Joan Rivers, Michael Jackson, Jocelyn Wildenstein and Donatella Versace among many others that we tend to associate with plastic surgery and no wonder why people fear surgery aside from unlicensed surgeons.

Often some people say things like "then what?" If you are willing to do that to yourself, than what else are you willing to do? What's next? Well sometimes I forget I got plastic surgery. I don't look like someone who did it. It's easy not to think about it. I don't feel like a Joan Rivers or Michael Jackson. I guess I too am a victim to America’s calling for perfection, or so some would say. Instead, I can identify myself with the Dominican woman from the article who said “We Latinas define ourselves with our bodies. We always have curves.” The decision to obtain surgery was based on obtaining a proportional balance.

Truth is people are going to have standards to what signifies beauty. Whether its what America deems as beautiful or what our own cultures deem as beautiful a standard will always exist. The issue arises when an unhealthy relationship with a scalpel develops.