The Ugly Past of Cosmetic Surgery

More people than ever are electing to undergo cosmetic surgery. A & B take a look at the history of cosmetic surgery and discuss why that is and what it means.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie, and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. And today we
are talking about cosmetic surgery and we're gonna put it

(00:26):
under the knife and talk about some history from current
events and social issues. I see what you did there
under the knife. Very nice. I in a in another life.
I'm a comedian. I know it. I'm a very bad comedian,
but I am a comedian. Um, and I wanted to
start off with a personal anecdote. UM, I have. I
have a relative. Every year for my birthday, she sends

(00:49):
me what I call the the gift equivalent of a
backhanded compliment, kind of extreme. UM. When I was nine,
she sent me two hundred dollars, which is really exciting,
but it came with a note that said, better start
saving up for that nose job. Now. Wow. UM. When

(01:11):
you told me that you had an anecdote that you
wanted to share to open the episode, I assumed that
you meant, Oh, my relative said this all handed thing
in passing about you know about my appearance that gave
me a complex. This is like an intentional, unintentional thing
meant to him give you a complex. I think I agree.
I thought about it a lot because I thought and

(01:33):
do still think it was funny. But when I tell
the story, I never get the reaction I am anticipating,
which is laughter. Most people just look at me like,
oh you poor dear. I am looking at you like,
oh you poor dear. Yes, I can confirm, can confirm.
A lot of you have written in requesting this topic,
and it is a topic that raises a lot of questions,

(01:55):
whether they're about feminism or racism, or religion or culture.
And the history of cosmetic surgery is not a pretty one.
There's war, there's disease, there is racism. But before we
get into that, we're going to do an overview, and
first off, we have to say there are medical reasons
like cleft flip and cleft palate and comfort reasons to

(02:16):
get plastic or reconstructive surgery. Breast reduction is a good example. Um,
But today we are focusing on cosmetic surgery for purely
aesthetic reasons and we're not here to make anyone feel guilty.
I have friends that have gotten cosmetic surgery and they
tell me it really boosted their confidence. And part of
me is really glad, and another part is like, I

(02:36):
really wish you didn't feel like you needed to look
a certain way to boost your confidence, because it is
really idealized standard that we're going forward. It's around on
sentence because my feelings around this are complicated. Yeah, I
have similarly complicated feelings. Um. Even though I think of
myself as this confident feminist woman, I've all I've always
wanted plastic surgery. Um, when I was in high school,

(02:59):
I want I It's like the girl who was saving
up money for a boob jog because I wanted a
boomtop so badly when I was younger. Um. And what's
funny is that, UM, my family, all the women in
my family have a very specific body type, and that
is really large breasts and then kind of like big
like shapely bottoms like we are we are. If you

(03:21):
saw all of my family in the lineup, you would say,
those are women that are related to each other. And
my mom has huge breasts. She had a breast production
surgery when I was in high school that was completely
life changing. Um. She the amount of money that this
woman would spend, Um, you know, specialized bras was just
through the roof. But I'll never forget like wanting so

(03:41):
badly to be the body type that the rest of
the women and my family were, and my mom was
this is a an antecote that say with me. When
my mom was getting her breast production surgery, her surgeon
looked at me and was like, oh, are you her daughter?
And I said yes, and he said, come back and
see me in a few years when you when I
get yours added on because I was I was so

(04:02):
flats tested. I was like, fourteen, What a thing to
say to a fourteen year old. I think he was
just thinking of it as a surgeon, right, But so yeah,
I just want I say that because I don't I
really really don't want anyone to think that we are
suggesting that you if you want to augment your looks

(04:25):
for any reason, whether it's for comfort because you know,
back issues from large breasts, or because you want you know,
you feel like you'd be more confident with bigger breasts,
a smaller nose, you know, a different kind of chin. Whatever. Um.
I don't want anyone to think that we're saying you
can't be a good feminist and like have fake boobs,
because I'm not saying that. And I wanted fake boobs

(04:47):
for a very long time. And it wasn't until I
realized that when you have bigger boobs you actually have
to spend a lot of money on bras sometimes that
I sort of was like, oh, well that actually doesn't
sound very fun um. But yeah, I am not judging
what anyone has done. You know, it gets like body autonomy,
it's your body. Yeah, we're not looking to sound judgmental
for sure. And there is an old Sminty blog post

(05:11):
that previous host Kristen wrote called Canned Plastic Surgery Stop Bullying.
That's worth a read and it touches on a lot
of what we're going to talk about. But before we
get started, let's let's talk about the difference between cosmetic
and plastic surgery. As part of their training, plastic surgeons
have to complete one and fifty cosmetic surgeries along with

(05:32):
training for surgeries that are reconstructive. Cosmetic surgeons, on the
other hand, have to complete three hundred cosmetic surgeries to
get board certification, and cosmetic surgeries are focused on appearance
enhancement and they are considered elective here in the United States,
most cosmetic surgeries aren't covered by insurance and unless it's
something that causes discomfort, like eyelids that impair vision, or

(05:56):
rhinoplasty for hindered breathing. Um. Those those are two good examples.
And because plastic surgery is so common these days, it's
actually gotten a lot safer and the cost has gone down.
Also the recovery of time, like you need less time
to recover. When my mom got her breast production surgery,
she was out of commission for several weeks. I don't
know that would still be the case today because of that,

(06:18):
though the number of people who are getting surgery for
purely aesthetic reasons has been steadily increasing. Um and again,
even though it's better that it's safer and cost less
and it's more affordable and the recovery time is less,
let's be real. These are still surgeries. You know, there's
always gonna be danger involved, but they have become a
lot more common and a lot more safe. Yeah, so

(06:40):
much so that they are even reality TV shows based
on transformative surgeries, like Extreme Makeover, which I thought was
about houses. I was gonna say, let me guess you did.
You did not. You were not a consumer of that
particular brand of media I had. I had a said
you got that feeling about me. Yeah, I definitely thought
that was about houses. Um. And this type of entertainment

(07:03):
actually isn't new. In when the New York Daily Mirror
ran an ad in search of the quote Homeliest Girl
in New York with promises that a cosmetic surgeon would
make a beauty out of the winner. I say heavy quotes, Um,
never fear embarrassment. The ad reassured upon publication of their pictures,

(07:24):
masks would be painted over their faces. So Jesus, that's
like that show that used to be on Fox, The Swan,
which I'm sure you did not remember, but basically, I
mean you could. It's the same. It's like the same premise. Um.
Also maybe like a little meaner almost, because it was
women who were supposed to be not desirable look or like,
not conventionally attractive, and they would get all this like

(07:46):
work done on themselves and then at the ad it
will be revealed supposed to be ugly duckling and then
the Swan. I just think those shows are so it's
almost grotesque, do you know what I mean? Oh? Absolutely one.
I'm disappointed wasn't about a swan. Just like with melodramatic music,
trying to maybe narration in the background. Um, and to you.

(08:08):
I have some friends that I stayed with last weekend
that definitely consume a lot of reality TV where she's
not referring She's not referring to me, by the way,
but it's not me. Um. But they were watching a
show about about models and I it. It really put

(08:30):
like a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Um watching it. It was not entertaining for me at all.
And I feel like shows like this Swan would would
do the same thing if I watched it. Yeah, they're
actually I mean, honestly, some are more grotesque than others.
To come to mind, I'm an expert on reality TV,

(08:51):
so it's just a niche thing that I know quite
a bit about. Um. One that comes to mind is
the show on I Think Oxygen where it's the Beauty
the Child Beauty pageant Honey Boo Boo. Basically her mom
is Mama June, and Mama June had you know, when
Honey Boo Boo was becoming a famous figure or whatever

(09:14):
on the In the pageant scene, they had this kind
of weird um situation where it turned out that Mama
June had been dating like a convicted UM sex criminal
and everyone was like it was like it was like
a pedophile. And so the show went off the air
and then they rebooted it as a show about Mama June,

(09:35):
who was a heavier woman and you know, not someone
who was conventionally attractive. UM. The show rebooted as UM
called from Hot or from not too Hot, and so
it was her getting classic surgery, you know, getting liposuction,
all of this, and it this was like a really
grotesque side show that had these really troubling roots because

(09:58):
at the end of the day, like this is a
family that you know, like the whole the whole thing.
This really drove home the side show aspect to the
shows that you're talking about. Another shows Botched, for the
whole point of the show is people who got bad
plastic surgery, like people who for lack of the better word,
we're botched like they they and showing showing the bad

(10:20):
plastic surgeries, like the plastic surgeries where you know, it
doesn't look good and they look really grotesque. It's it's
just a weird It's like it's like a modern day
side show. I guess that's what I'm saying like like
a freak show or something. Yeah, it's it's strange. UM.
Aside from shows like that, the cosmic surgery is a

(10:44):
big business. UM. Americans spent more than sixteen billion dollars
on cosmetic surgeries and minimally invasive procedures like botox in.
Women make up eighty six of procedures, but of cosmetic
surgeons are male. Wow. And if we're talking about the

(11:05):
surgery that I wanted all through high school, breast implants,
nearly one out of every two hundred and fifty American
women got implants in, which comes out to about six
twenty seven thousand fake boobs. That same year, according to
the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, fifteen point nine million
cosmetic procedures were performed in the United States, and that

(11:26):
is up one d and fifteen percent since the year
two thousand. In that same time range from two thousand
to breast lifts have increased buttocks lifts two d two percent,
lower body lifts three thousand, nine hundred seventy three an
upper arm lifts four thousand, nine fifty six percent. Fun

(11:48):
side note, maybe I have a friend who called she's
very Southern, and she calls like arm fat high Helen's,
because when your arm like hi Helen, that's when it
will jiggle. Oh oh, I see, I see it. You
guys can't see me, but I'm waving and they're they're
going my high Helen's, Hi Helen. I don't know if

(12:08):
that's the Southern thing or not, but it sounds very
Southern to me. Is also known among the biz as
the Year of the Rear, with estimates putting the average
at one button implant every thirty minutes of every day
that year. Wow, that is a lot of booty. It's
a lot of booty. The top five procedures in were

(12:30):
breast augmentation, LiPo section, nose reshaping, islet surgery, and the
tummy tech. And I found this really interesting speaking about
those sort of minimally invasive procedures. The top five of
those were botox, soft tissue fillers, chemical peels, laser hair removals,
and micro demebration, which I guess I didn't even really
think about as cosmetic surgery, but I guess they are. Yeah.

(12:52):
I kind of hadn't put that in the same bucket either.
Like we said in our Bad Sex episode, Lady, a
plasty increased the most in up from an Americans account,
with the largest portion of cosmetic surgery procedures worldwide at
eight percent. This is according to the International Society of
Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Brazil is a closed second with

(13:14):
about eleven percent, followed by Japan, Italy and Mexico. But
and I found this really interesting. The top spot might
should go to South Korea, sometimes called the plastic surgery
capital of the world. The industry isn't regulated there, which
makes keeping track of numbers pretty difficult. Up to eight
of the surgeons operating in South Korea aren't certified, and

(13:37):
they're known as ghost doctors, which is a horror movie
I've seen in a different life, but that's separate. Somewhere
between one third and one fifth of South Korean women
are thought to have undergone cosmetic surgery, along with a
little less than one fifth of men. There's even an
improvement quarter, with four hundred to five hundred clinics or

(13:57):
hospitals in the space of a square aisle. A story
published in The New Yorker claimed that it's fairly common
for a relative to say that you'd be better looking
with insert cosmetic surgery thing here. It's not an insult,
so maybe my relative is just cottoning off of that.
The most popular surgery is blueflora plasti, which is when
a crease is put into the eyelid to make the

(14:20):
eyes look larger, and this procedure became popular after the
Korean War when Koreans wanted to get more Western eyes,
particularly among sex workers looking for an American clientele. Now
before a plastic is a common gift for high schoolers. Yeah,
we had a foreign exchange student from South Korea and

(14:40):
when she graduated and went back to South Korea, Um,
that was her her and her sister. That was their
gift was that was getting that surgery, which at the
time we were like, what plastic surgery for your graduation present?
But I guess it's a thing. It is a thing,
and a popular look among South kore Ends is called
bagel girl, which is baby faced and glorious. And an

(15:05):
example of a questionnaire from one of these places that
you would fill out before you go in to get
to get your cosmetic surgery, the question is, if you
get the result you want from plastic surgery, what's the
thing you most want to do? A upload of selfie
without using photoshop, be get a lover, see find a job,

(15:28):
d enter a competition for face beauty. Mm hmmm interesting
options there, um, especially as an upload a selfie without
using photoshop. I know we'll talk more about this going
on in the episode, but and I don't know. People
have heard of me get on my social media Instagram
perfection soapbox many many times before, so we're doing that

(15:50):
again right now. But I do think there's something to
this idea that people get confused with photoshop and face filters,
where we don't understand what what an actual human faith
looks like anymore. That we had this idea that you know,
your face is supposed to look like it does but
it has doggy bilter on it, and it's that's not

(16:10):
necessarily true. Yeah, and not at all. And I do
think one of the things that really stuck out to
me doing this research is I was surprised at how
many people have gotten cosmetic surgery, and in my own life,
I've been surprised to find out people who have gotten it.

(16:30):
And it makes me wonder if I am looking at
someone and thinking, oh, I wish I looked like that,
or I wish my nose was like that, or I
wish I didn't have wrinkles there if they if I
if I'm unaware of how many people around me have
had cosmetic surgery, that I'm comparing myself too. Oh wow, yeah,
because I mean I had that had not occurred to me,

(16:52):
because you might not necessarily know when you look at
someone that they've had work done. And so if you're
if you're I mean, it's just just another way another
trap of us getting stuck in this idea of unattainable
beauty and perfection that no one could could achieve without
a little you know, a little nipital talk, right right. Um.

(17:13):
And another interesting thing I found is that American cosmetic
surgeons get cosmetic surgery at a much higher rate than
the rest of the population, and they sort of see
it as an advertisement for their work and makes sense, although, um,
the female surgeons got breast augmentation at lower rates than
the rest of the population. What do you think that means?

(17:36):
I I don't know. I thought about this a lot, because, um,
this is an article on our our very own site,
how Stuff Works, And they were interviewing one woman in particular,
and she said that it's just seen as more like
your face is more of the billboard, and so it's

(17:58):
like easier work to to do and recover from, I
suppose as as compared to any sort of implants. So
I guess it's like an easier it's billboard to buy out.
It is interesting, though, It's really really interesting. Yeah. That
would almost be like if you went to a Ford

(18:20):
dealership and the guy who was selling you your Ford,
who was like, all, this a great FOURD, this is
a great Ford. He drove a camera. It will be
something from like what Yeah, I'm just kid. That's I
found that. I find that so curious. Yeah, yeah, So
I guess the question this inevitably brings us to is
why are so many people deciding to modify their looks

(18:44):
with cosmetic surgery? And the answer may seem obvious, but
I think it is absolutely worth looking into. When Bonnie
Berry conducted her study examining beauty and the discrimination and
biased surrounding it, she came to the conclusion that around
half of all Americans are un happy with their looks,
which she thinks is because of the way the media
and culture portray beauty. But people have been taking part

(19:07):
in painful corrective surgeries before anesthesia before in a subjects
way way before we were constantly bombarded with images of
the ideal beauty standard. And we'll get into some history
after a quick break for word from our sponsor, and

(19:30):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. So humans have been modifying
the way their bodies looked for a long time, whether
through tattoos, piercing, or scarring. Cosmetic surgery, or at least
the foundations of it has been around for centuries. Some
of the techniques have been around longer than that, since
before the Common era, the ruling class in Asia in

(19:51):
particular was big on utilizing these techniques for an early
kind of rhinoplasty, and in a sixth century before Common
era book out of India, the healer Shrewta described performing
skin graphs for cosmetic surgeries. So that's that's a pretty
long time. By one thousand CE, rhino plastics had grown
pretty popular. This was because of the practice of cutting

(20:13):
off the noses and upper lips of captured soldiers. So
many of our cosmetic surgeries began this way as a
treatment for soldiers wounded during conflict. Yeah, I found that
really surprising. I didn't know anything about the history of
plastic surgery as it relates to soldiers who had been
um captured and deformed in that way. It's really we've

(20:33):
come such a long way from those roots. I don't
think most people know that. I don't think so when
we go in to get botox or whatever, people are thinking, Oh,
the long storied history of war and conflict. Um written
records from the sixteenth century out of Britain and elsewhere
in Europe described barber surgeons who specialized in fixing perceived

(20:54):
facial deformities. And the reason it comes up when historians
talk about cosmets surgery is because at the time, an
ugly face was seen as a reflection of who you
were on the inside. The sentiment of it's the inside
that counts did not exist, and in fact, your physical
presentation was understood as a reflection of your inner self

(21:18):
and your morality, big serious business. Because of that, your
outward appearance impacted your status and social mobility in a major,
major way. And yes it still does, but for different reasons.
And we're going to talk more about that later. And
it shows you how important this idea was that people

(21:39):
would risk their lives and endore excruciating pain to correct it.
But it was really risky. Most of the first cases
of this happening were for incredibly stigmatized things, particularly the
loss of nose associated with syphilis. Wow. Yeah, I'm I'm yeah.
The early form of a nose job was called a

(22:00):
pedical flap graft, which is often miscredited to Dr Harold
Gillies in nineteen fifteen as a way of reconstructing the
faces of World War One soldiers. Gillies is seen as
the father of modern cosmetic surgery, at least to some people,
again primarily for wounded soldiers two thousand soldiers from the
nineteen seventeen Battle of Psalms Alone. Okay, so the pedical

(22:21):
flap graft. Basically, this entails cutting some skin off of
the patient's forehead or their arm, and in the case
of the forehead, holding it down and stitching it if
the skin came from the arm, according to a diagram
published in eighteen forty one, to make sure the skin
grasps it onto the nose, the patient's are gonna be
harnessed and a raised position. Um, probably making your hello,
Helen's flap all the time, um, and so you sort

(22:44):
of attached to the it's will include the diagram. It's
it's so it's complicated to explain, but you basically attached
the arm in a raised position to the face during
the healing period to make sure that that skin did
indeed graph um. We looked at the pictures of it.
It looks ridiculous. It looks quite brutal. And I just

(23:10):
how long can you keep your your arm in that
position without doing damage to your arm? I have question,
it's kind of it's got I can only imagine how
uncomfortable that would must be and how how long does
that heal? Because again, like you just mentioned, we're when
I think of a healing period for cosmetic surgery in
I'm thinking a week or two. This was back in

(23:30):
the eighteen hundreds. You would have to have your hand
like that for kind of a while at BET, I
would guess. So yeah. But two things happened in the
eighteen hundreds that made cosmetic surgery more commonplace. The first
was William Morton, an American dentist, performed the first painless
operation in eighteen forty six. And to do this, Morton
gave ether to the patient either through a handkerchief or

(23:54):
through a bellows and if done and properly, this could
be fatal. And the second thing was in eighteen sixties,
UM several European countries adopted Joseph Lister's surgical practice of
using antiseptic to accomplish sterile surgery. But despite those advancements UM,

(24:17):
the methods didn't really improve. They still did the arm
harness attached to the face thing for rhinoplasty, with the
new addition of a hot wax injection, which was then
sculpted by the surgeon into whatever shape they were looking for.
It didn't always work, and it's sometimes backfired, resulting in
disfigurement and or wax cancers are paraphenomas. John Orlando Road

(24:39):
did discover a way to perform surgery inside the nose
in the eighties so no scar would develop, and that
was something people really wanted, so people other folks couldn't
tell that they had gotten the surgery. And that brings
us to the new millennium. Advertisement for the Derma Futural
Company included surgeries for quote, humped, depressed or ill shaped noses,

(25:01):
protruding ears, and the finger marks of time, which is
just a fancy way of saying wrinkles. The finger marks
of time it's a it's a very poetic it is.
That's something I would say, slam poetry event the finger
wrinkles of time, thank you very much. Just my home.

(25:21):
That that that's it, the one line in the new Walk.
It would be dramatic, it would be very dramatic. Ads
for cosmetic surgery weren't really targeted towards women at first,
and in fact it was the opposite um what was
more common for women to come across for those devices.
I'm sure a lot of you have seen that look
like there's something out of a horror movie. And they

(25:43):
promised all kinds of things that, of course they generally
didn't deliver on. At one time, these contraptions were more
common than makeup. I have to say, those advertisements we
associate them with the days of yesteryear. But there are
still all kinds of face contraptions that you know, promise
the world in terms of skincare, and I have to
say I have bought and tried most of them. There's

(26:05):
nothing I like more than a like some sort of
thing I don't know, like the I have this mask
that emits a light that's supposed to help with acne,
whether it does or not who knows, but whenever I
see them, I'm like, oh, that looks so weird. I
have to try it. I have to say, a mask
that meets the light. If you saw a picture of it,

(26:26):
you it would freak you out. It's um yeah, it's
called the light Therapy acne mask. And it looks like
a like I want you to look a look up
a picture of it. It's like a Michael Myer's mask
and a daft punk space helmet had a baby. That's
what it looks like. And then you put it on
your face at night, and then you know when your remader,
your boyfriend comes in there, like, what the hell is

(26:47):
happening here? That I do see a lot of opportunities
for for pranks, for scaring people. What color the lights pink? Oh?
Of course, so it's actually it's actually look like I
kind of a it's a oh. Actually sometimes they can
be blue. My last pink. Sorry, I'm looking at this
up now. I didn't know they made him in blue. Well,

(27:07):
I'm sure the blue is for dudes. Even even our
creepy acne face bats have to be gendered. The patriarchy
can't let let us have anything. Okay, we gotta get
back on check here. I'm gonna ask you more questions
off Mike about this. But the most requested cosmetic surgeries
were to achieve the white beauty standard. Of course, the

(27:29):
white nose in particular and twisted up in that was
the legacy of that nose left behind by syphilis that
people wanted to avoid. In the early days, no one
wanted breast enlargements. They wanted breast productions because smaller breast
were associated with white women and also are maybe because
of that, we're seen as a sign of youth and

(27:49):
of sexual control. And during the flapper air of the
nineteen twenties, it wasn't uncommon for a woman to want
smaller breasts to fit into that flapper look and also
of those flapper clothes. Some of the first movie stars
and burgeoning Hollywood got cosmetic surgeries in the twenties to
increase their odds of getting more leading roles. Breast and plants.

(28:10):
Aside the rest pendulum move in the other direction. When
small breasts took on a different connotation in the fifties,
then they were a side of unhappy woman with a
medical condition. I really think that you can see this
when it comes to like actresses and models, how it
kind of how certain body types sort of go into
fashion and add of fashion for a while, Like in
the nineties the look was big kind of bag watch boobs.

(28:33):
Actresses with small boobs were associated more with like class
and wealth, like your Gwyneth Paltrow's that kind of thing.
And then if you would big boobs, I think you
were so meant to would be seen as like trashy. Yeah,
I can definitely see that playing out in our in
our entertainment, they're more sexualized for sure, bigger boobs. Yeah,

(28:55):
So it definitely seems to be something that kind of
swings along this pen to the love what is and
it's not? In style? Um. In nineteen sixty two, the
very first silicone breast and plant surgery took place in Texas.
And when you're talking about the history of cosmetic surgery,
to back up a little bit, you have to mention
Dr Charles Miller, who has been called the father of

(29:17):
modern cosmetic surgery by some and an unabashed quack by others.
Miller started off his career as a clinical surgeon, and
soon after setting up his own practice, he started to
publish articles on futural surgery over twenty articles in nineteen
o seven alone. His textbook Cosmetic Surgery, The Correction of

(29:37):
Futural and Imperfections hit the shelves. That same year, he
fell off the radar for a bit in legal trouble
over his ownership of three quack drug stores, but he
made a comeback as an editor in nineteen fifteen and
start his own journal in nine He went as far
to recommend that some nerves in the face should be

(30:00):
severed to keep wrinkles from from forming. Though the cosmetic
surgery world would for the most part, like to forget
about him, he was one of the first that recognized
and wrote about the societal concern around mostly feminine beauty
and its market value. Now, Miller, who often condemned crack
doctors and his articles, is remembered as one himself. That's

(30:24):
history for you was a pretty big year when it
comes to shifting views around cosmetic surgeries. That year, the
American Association of Plastic Surgery had their first meeting, and
it was the first year of the Miss America pageant.
Consumer beauty culture, particularly for women, really started to take off.
Over the next couple of decades. Beauty came to be

(30:45):
seen as less of a natural indicator of personal character
granted by God and more of a thing that you
could change if you wanted to. And cosmetic surgery is
really wrapped up in all of that. As the number
of people electing to get work done has gone up,
researchers have been digging into why that my be and
we'll get into some of those reasons after a quick break,

(31:13):
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Now. A big trend
in the cosmetic surgery world that has caused a lot
of concern and anxiety is that more and more teenagers
are getting them sixty four thousand cosmetic surgery patients or
between ages thirteen and nineteen in the United States. One
reason that experts think the number of teens getting surgery
is rising has to do with the media, celebrity social media,

(31:35):
especially when a seventeen year old Kylie Jenner revealed that
she had gotten lip fillers. Many on the Internet felt
pretty strong feelings about it. The number of teams seeking
cosmetic surgery has prompted proposals to put a minimum age
in place depending on the procedure. Another reason teens might
be getting cosmetic surgeries is the same reason Bonnie Barrier
I've done in her study that we mentioned at the

(31:56):
top of the show, unhappiness with your looks. It seems
like the most obvious answer. A two thousand nine Steady
into why young American women go through with cosmetic surgery
found that body dissatisfaction was the biggest predictor of interest
in cosmetic surgery. And according to Dr Judy Rosenberg, a
clinical psychologist, our culture makes it so socially acceptable to

(32:18):
seek plastic surgery, and because celebrities create the idea that
if you're beautiful and perfect, you will be rich, famous,
and loved, teens easily associate this with plastic surgery solution
as a pathway to feeling better. For parents, she advises
getting to the heart of why your child wants cosmetic
surgery before okaying a cosmetic surgery. That makes me so

(32:40):
sad that young people feel that way. But again, it's
not just young people. I think all of us can
get caught in that, whether you're seventeen or you know,
I think it can be tempting to think that your
life would be improved if you could just lose that weight,
fix your nose, had the perfect hair, whatever, yeah, And
I just think of how insecure I was at that age,

(33:05):
and it's such a formative time. And if there is
bullying happening, and you think, if only I looked this way,
then things would improve it. I can absolutely see why
why people, young people would go through with this. Yeah,
and you know, we talk a lot about reality TV

(33:25):
and social media. Research actually backs up her point that
reality TV can have a big impact on how young
people feel about their bodies. More than one study has
found that people who watch reality TV shows about cosmetic
surgery report an elevated influence to go get the procedure themselves.
And so if you watch The Swan or Extreme Makeover
or you know those shows, you might think, oh, libo

(33:50):
suction or a nose job, that's what I'm missing. It
sort of normalizes it for you, I would imagine. I mean,
it kind of makes sense that people who watch that
that type of media would would consider getting cosmetic surgery
as compared to people who don't. Religion is actually another
big predictor. The more conservatively religious a person is, the

(34:12):
less likely they are to seek out cosmetic surgery. And
of course, things like anorexia and body dysmorphia might be
factors to body dysmorphia. R b d D is a
mental condition that causes extreme preoccupation with a physical flaw
that is either invisible or minor to others, and something

(34:33):
tangentially related that we sort of mentioned at the top,
getting a lot of traction with the news right now
is being called snapchat dysmorphia, and this is an increasing
number of people who are seeking out cosmetic surgery to
look like their selfies with the filters and the smoothing
and all these other enhancing effects. Snapchat dysmorphia describes that

(34:57):
one report found that of facial plastic surgeons saw patients
who want to look more like their selfies coming in
and showing a plastic a cosmetic surgery and a picture
of themselves and saying, I want to look like this. Um.
Young girls who regularly edit and share selfies experience higher
levels of body dissatisfaction than those who don't. One of

(35:20):
my favorite writers, Nancy Joe Sales, has spent years interviewing
teen girls with a focus on their relationship to social media,
and she found that a lot of her subjects viewed
things like lip enhancements as a form of empowerment. And feminism,
but at the same time desire to keep those same
procedures a secret, which is not super empowering. She speculated
that this is in part because of the ads and
other media linking sexualization to feminism or, in her words,

(35:44):
quote some young women think that even raising the question
is being sexist. That's the dirty little trick of this messaging.
Anyone who questions whether sexualization is feminism is quote sexist.
And when writing about this over at Harper's Bazaar, Kathleen
Hail surmised out everyone admitted that being on Instagram often
made her feel insecure, but no one would admit to

(36:05):
get in cosmetic surgery because of that insecurity, because that's
off brand. Insecurity isn't marketable, it doesn't jive with our
stylized version of feminism, and most of all, it isn't pretty.
You can dress up plastic surgery however you want, you
can give it feminist injections, but we do it because
we doubt ourselves, and in an age of carefully curated,

(36:25):
branded self expression, disguise its honesty. That's the one thing
women aren't talking about, the eternal truth that predates even
my stone age eighties birth. There is nothing less attractive
than a lack of confidence. And there's nothing feminist about
plastic surgery. It's just female and side note if it helps.

(36:47):
I'm way insecure, so I'll just say it out there.
Oh my god, I am people. Yeah, I am very insecure?
Are we all are? High school? I was so insecure.
I was like obsessed with my with how I looked,
and I thought I looked awful all the time. Um,

(37:08):
I think it go I wouldn't say that insecurity goes
away as you get older. I think that you just
become more comfortable with your body. At least I have. Um,
I'm still insecure, but you know, this is my body,
is my body, and like this is this, this is
the hand I've been dealt, you know, so you may
as well, like just learn to live with it. This

(37:30):
is the hand I've been dealt. Is excellent. No, but
you know what I mean. I mean, I'm not I'm
not like down on my looks. But I think that,
like when we I think that in a kind of way,
it's a sort of self a self acceptance where you
know you're I'm never going to have the perfectness and
perfect perfect this and perfect that. So I just have
to like like the way that I am and they

(37:50):
accepted and it's it's flawed, hairy beauty. I like that.
I like that. Um. And also before we move on
to the next thing, I did want to mention like
stylized feminism sort of sounds like a type of cool
girl to me. Just food for thought perhaps. And as

(38:10):
far as cosmetic surgery and feminism goes, I mentioned at
the top my complicated feelings around it, and the Internet
tells me that these complicated emotions are shared by a
lot of feminists. Ultimately, it's up to the woman if
she has the monetary resources to afford it, which is
an added layer to this discussion. And you can think

(38:32):
about makeup and shaving, bringing up similar anxieties, although cosmetic
surgery is a bigger, more permanent thing than shaving or makeup,
and unless you're combining the two into like laser hair
surgery or permanent makeup. But similarly, as with those things
that your body, your decision, there's no one size fits
all answer, and you can totally be feminist and do

(38:54):
all of these things. Um. But on the flip side,
it is worth asking why so many of us and
so many women in particular, are getting these cosmetic surgeries
whose ideal are we trying to meet and keep in
mind at the bar for how a woman should look
keeps on moving, you know that pendulum. Sometimes it's big boobs,

(39:16):
sometimes it's small boobs. Sometimes it's a big buttons that
small butt, And now we have the tools to reach
that bar before it moves again. It's just another one
of those tight ropes that as women that were supposed
to walk where you're penalized if you don't look a
certain way financially and socially. But if you undergo surgery
to get that look and people find out, then you're
condemned as vain, silly, wasteful, and probably a bad feminist

(39:38):
and find out because as we've alluded to, a lot
of women are keeping their procedures a secret um That's
probably why Subtle is the cosmetic surgery trend of the moment.
And all of this does tie into something we talked
about so often on the show, which is how women
are valued on their appearance, and in particularly the appearance
most desired by men. If we think about things like

(39:59):
the beauty gap, showing that more traditionally attractive women get
paid more and are perceived as more confident. It's easy
to understand how a lot of folks see cosmetic surgery
as a way to expand there are opportunities in life.
And I think that really plays into a lot what
we talk about on the show, that it's really not
fair to demonize women when we are sort of dealt

(40:21):
this bad hand to begin with. We have we are
expected to be all of these things that nobody could
possibly be, and if we want to get ahead socially financially,
we have to figure out a way to make it work,
to make the impossible sort of work. And you know,
I don't know. I think that we we when we
demonize women for getting plastic surgery, it's just another way
of throwing other women under the bus when we should

(40:43):
be throwing the patriarch here under the bus. And I
think Cherry Healey, who was the presenter of Sex Knives
and Lipersection, would agree with you. She said she cried
every day while working on that project. Quote. It was
so so challenging to make sense of it because for
one woman, surgery will change your life and they will
feel happy and they'll have wished they'd done it ten

(41:04):
years earlier, and for another woman it will ruin her life,
and for another woman is the best use of that
thirty grand and for another woman that will stop her
traveling the world and buying a flat. There's not one rule.
And she went on to say she doesn't judge a
woman who gets cosmetic surgery because quote, she lives in
a world that tells her every single day, hundreds and
hundreds of times that we like beautiful people, and we

(41:26):
prefer beautiful people. And if you're not beautiful, you displease
me because your ornament for me to enjoy. Mm hmm. Yeah.
So the conclusion is we can't win um as long
as we live in a society where we value women
on their looks and punish them for signs of age.
It's no wonder, at least to me. So many are

(41:48):
opting for cosmetic surgery, and it can be hard to
separate out what's something you want for your own sake
or something society has conditioned you to want. So therapist
just to getting the bottom of that first before committing
to cosmetic surgery, if if possible, those it's really hard
to untangle those things. But um worth worth asking the

(42:12):
question for sure, and speaking of asking the question. One
stuff that we can take is having this conversation out
in the open. So we want to hear from you.
Have you had plastic surgery? What are your thoughts on
plastic surgery? Did you get it and regret it? Did
you get it and it changed your life? We want
to know it all. You can email us at mom
Stuff at how Stuff Works. You can find us on
Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, and on Instagram That stuff

(42:34):
Mom never told you And this brings us to Listener mail.
Our first letters from Heather, she wrote, I want to
thank you for putting into words almost exactly my thoughts
during the whole situation. And this was in regards to
our episode on the immigration issue and separating families. Hearing

(42:54):
your justified rage made me feel a little less crazy
when trying to sort through the mess. Second, towards the
beginning of the episode, you mentioned that the Bible verse
the administration used to justify separating families actually didn't so
we should ignore it. I would argue that we should
ignore that regardless of if it justified it or not.
I want to add here, since people often accuse me

(43:16):
of being anti religious, that I am very religious person
and I try to live my life according to the Bible.
But the US is not a theocracy. We actually have
two really great concepts written into our government called separation
of church and state and freedom of religion. Freedom of
religion forbids the federal government from enforcing our endorsing religion
and separation is the idea that church and state don't

(43:36):
go together and that religion has no space in the state.
By trying to use the Bible to justify their actions,
the government is basically ignoring those two very important parts
of our constitution and rights. Quoting scripture as a reason
behind national policy makes it so that politician is basically
endorsing that religion and forcing it onto people who don't
subscribe to that religion or any religion. I have no

(43:58):
problem with politicians using religion their private lives to justify
personal things like whether or not to divorce his or
her spouse or to not accept a living stipend. However,
when it comes to political discourse and policymaking, I believe
any argument using religion or religious text should automatically be invalid,
regardless of if I agree with the policy or not

(44:19):
completely agree. Completely agree I as I've gotten older, I've
noticed more and more how many, how many things that
we just take for granted in our society that have
religious like reasoning behind them in politics, and I've grown

(44:39):
angry and angry about it. So completely agree. Yeah, we
could do an entire episode breaking down some of that stuff.
Some of it you might even might not even notice,
Like how many times are there religious connotations to our money?
Says I'm got to be trust you know, like it's everywhere,
It is everywhere absolutely. Felix wrote, I'm a queer trans

(45:01):
man most of my adolescence that considered myself quote not
like other girls. Spoiler it's because I wasn't a girl.
I found that my guy friends would often view me
as quote, one of the guys or try to put
me in a cool girl box, despite lacking of the
obligatory traditionally attractive factor. Wasn't particularly good at that, but
I still had male friends crushing. I've spoken to my
trans peers and found that many trans guys and trans

(45:23):
masculine folks find this especially when they're attracted to men,
because in many cases we do have masculine interest and
lean toward more masculine behavior. I used to have nerdy
male friends developed crushes all the time, to the point
where I'd act standoffish and rude just to put them
off the quote cool girl and didn't usually help. When
I transitioned, I realized how much I've been holding back

(45:44):
in my friendships, particularly with straight men, because I didn't
want to have to reject them and have that have
an impact on our friendship. I don't think that sist
men realize the amount of constant analysis that women in
a fab assigned female at birth people often end up doing,
even when it comes to friendships. It's pretty exhausting. Yeah,
that is. This is a good letter. Thank you for
writing in Felix. It is exhausting. Um. I also just

(46:07):
really I find it very interesting how um, cool girl
sort of translates through your experience I do to you.
As we've lamented a lot on this show, most of
the research we find is focused on heterosexual folks, and
it's always wonderfully here from listeners that can give more

(46:27):
nuance to whatever topic we're talking about and just hearing
those experiences. So keep that coming. We really appreciate it.
And if folks want to send us emails, how can
they do that? They can email us at mom Stuff
at how stuffworks dot com, and you can always find
us on Instagram at stuff Bomb, Never Told You and

(46:48):
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and Thinks. As always
to our producer Andrew Howard,