ScienceDaily: “Makeover Shows Correspond With Increased Body Anxiety”

Excerpt:

“The Swan.” “I Want a Famous Face.” “Dr. 90210.” “Extreme
Makeover.” “Nip/Tuck.” The list goes on. These are a few of the TV shows that have
examined, and promoted, the bene?ts of plastic surgery in recent years. University of Southern California professor Julie Albright believes the shows are driving women to go under the knife to conform to a heightened de?nition of beauty, one that is increasingly dif?cult to attain.

[...]

“Women are being taught to access power and status through their looks, “ Albright believes. “Before women might buy a Louis Vuitton purse to show off their ‘status.’ Now they might buy new breasts as a sign of their success.”

At the very least, these shows act as an advertisement for the plastic surgery industry, Albright says. At the most these shows impose unrealistic beauty standards that make people question their own bodies while giving them an instruction manual on how to change their appearance.

Full article here.

Via Jezebel.

OttawaCitizen.com : Mommy Makeovers Inspired by Celebrities

“Forget facials and pedicures. Today’s new moms want tummy tucks and breast lifts.”

Excerpt:

The fact that more women are turning to plastic surgery worries Shari Graydon, author of In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You.

“Apparently, the pressure on new mothers to care for the every need of a completely incompetent and utterly defenceless newborn while stumbling around in a perpetual state of sleep-deprived hormonal overload isn’t enough,” she says.

Giving plastic surgery a name like “mommy makeover” is just clever marketing to women whose body image is suffering, Graydon says. “Calling cosmetic surgery, whether it happens two years or two decades after a woman gives birth, a ‘mommy makeover’ is a cynical attempt to normalize medically unjustified radical intervention.”

Graydon also says mothers who have plastic surgery send a mixed message to their children.

“You can’t convincingly tell your kids, ‘You’re beautiful just the way you are,’ if you’re risking major anesthetic yourself to remake your body after it does what it was biologically designed to do.”

Full article here.

Can You Spot A Pattern?

A collection of US Weekly covers from 2008: