Do We Need Cosmetic Surgery - Essay Example

Cosmetic surgery         Introduction        Today cosmetic plastic surgery represents one of the most profitable industries in the world. It is a well-known fact that famous people from show business who can afford such expensive services have become permanent clients of cosmetic surgery clinics. Every plastic operation of famous person becomes a sensation and actively discussed in media. Nevertheless, the cosmetic surgery industry with all its popularity and the advantages it brings, also creates a lot of problems, which should not stay unnoticed, since the quantity of people, who really received needed help from cosmetic surgery is much lower than the quantity of dissatisfied individuals who usually keep silence and do not declare about poor results of their plastic operation (Blum, 2003). The main argument of this paper is that cosmetic surgery with all its advantages has a lot of problems, which should be defined and declared. This work will perform a detailed investigation of the problems, created by cosmetic surgery and unknown to people, because of companies’ aim to get profit. The main conclusion of the given paper is that cosmetic surgery conceals a lot of facts, which should be known to people who are dreaming to change their life for better by means of plastic operation. The aim is money, not the quality People with high earnings want to try everything the life offers to them. Cosmetic surgery clinic is a place where many women are running immediately after they see a needed sum on their accounts. They consider plastic operation to be something that brings them and lot of happiness and popularity not realizing that the results may be quite opposite. Unfortunately, cosmetic surgery may create even more problems. Surely, a great number of famous people had such operations; however, the results that we see on TV usually make us unpleasantly surprised. Very often unwanted results are the consequences of low quality of the provided services. It is necessary we should understand that cosmetic surgery is first of all business and the main goal of many cosmetic surgery clinics is to gain profit and not all the businesses are completely honest. Often they save on necessary materials buying cheaper ones (Bradley, 1994). The pre-operation consultations are given by specially prepared people who skillfully conceal the compromising facts. Now plastic operation is becoming daily action of many women who can afford it and even for those who save money not buying what they want and need in order to have the new operation. Consequently, the quantity of operations per year is increasing in all countries. According to the data, in England this quantity reaches 80.000 per year, while in the United States the number of plastic operations per year is approximately 12.5 million. Certainly, not all the surgeries are performed by high-qualified experts. Taking into account the seriousness of such surgery, it is possible to imagine the consequences that the operation performed by low-qualified person may have. The amount of money paid for plastic operations during last decade of years now is approximately 50 million dollars. These amounts and bad consequences are deliberately concealed and it is suspected that big amounts of money are paid to the patients for not making the poor results public (Blum, 2003). Limited opportunities The results of last investigations conducted in order to examine the claims the people who went through a plastic surgery make, showed that the great number of claims are connected with the unpleasant consequences of operations on face and breast. A very interesting fact was revealed: most of the claims are not connected with the poor quality of service or low-qualified experts. The people were unsatisfied with the results, which did not meet their expectations. Certainly, this happened not because the doctors were not qualified or experienced or the materials were bad. The problem is that sometimes nobody can make the person look better than he is by nature. Nothing can be perfect, and sometimes it is really impossible to make a girl look like Cindy Crawford with the help of cosmetic surgery, the opportunities of which is limited like everything in our world. However, unsatisfied patients do not want to understand this and accuse their doctors in everything that happened to them applying to court and even asking to return their previous appearance. Thus, cosmetic surgery industry represents not only the most profitable industry, but the medical area closely connected with different court cases, which are very unpleasant for both sides. Idealistic hopes of the patients prevent them from clear understanding of what they should really expect. Moreover, many of the patients do not really need the cosmetic surgery and do not want to listen to the doctors who sometimes try to dissuade people from unnecessary surgery. At the same time many experts give false expectations themselves in order to gain profit. They know pretty well that the results will not be as perfect as they say, but the money is the top priority for many of them (Hall, 2003). The false mission The mission of cosmetic surgery is to help people who really need the help that plastic surgery can provide. However, the task implemented by the cosmetic surgery in reality is far from this mission. Instead of providing people in need with the help, the doctors satisfy whim of people who do not need any operations at all (Edmonds, 2007). Some of them do not know how to spend their money and some of them represent the victims of cosmetic surgery advertising. Promising the perfect results, cosmetic surgery automatically makes people cry the moon. It makes them forget about the fact that they are perfect by nature and there is no need to make their appearance better, because it is not the most important in our life to look beautiful (Moore, 2004). The values of people are influenced and this influence can’t be called positive. Unfortunately, the psychological effect of cosmetic surgery advertising is strong and negative: nice and beautiful people, who are actually recognized to be the most diffident, start looking for their drawbacks, suffer and finally began to save money in order to apply to cosmetic surgery clinic. Molly Wetterschneider writes:  Television both reflects and propagates the increasing popularity of this branch of medicine. Yet, even with its extensive coverage of cosmetic surgery’s appeal, television does little to inform the public of its drawbacks (Wetterschneider, 2006). Conclusion After analyzing the problems of cosmetic surgery, it is possible to conclude that unfortunately modern cosmetic surgery does not implement its primary mission – to help people who really need this help. Instead, it creates more problems than provide solutions. The main problems can be clearly defined: experts conceal the truth about the unpleasant results of wrongly performed operations; people usually have unrealistic hopes as for the results of plastic operations and not all the experts try to dissuade them from the wrong step; a great number of unpleasant court cases appear as a result of people’s dissatisfaction; the psychological effect of cosmetic surgery advertising creates many psychological problems to nice and beautiful people who do not really need an operation; The revealed problems should be paid appropriate attention in order to turn the efforts of the experts in the field of cosmetic plastic surgery to their real mission implementation. Certainly, in our modern world, where business and money became the top priority for the most people, immediate positive results can’t be expected, but the hope can’t be destroyed and appropriate research in the field really should help improve the situation. Works Cited Blum, Virginia L. Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.  Bradley, Edward L. A Patient's Guide to Surgery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.  Edmonds, Alexander. "'The Poor Have the Right to Be Beautiful': Cosmetic Surgery in Neoliberal Brazil. Neoliberal." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13.2 (2007) Hall, Mark A. "State Regulation of Medical Necessity: The Case of Weight-Reduction Surgery." Duke Law Journal 53.2 (2003) Moore, Michele C. Md, and Caroline M. De Md Costa. Do You Really Need Surgery? A Sensible Guide to Hysterectomy and Other Procedures for Women. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.  Wetterschneider, Molly F. Unpeeling Cosmetic Surgery’s Glossy Surface, 2006, available at http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=1127&id=40573,. Read More