Do you find cosmetic surgery disturbing?

[Rocco]

Please pardon this rant. It is not about medically necessary or helpful procedures, this is strictly about vanity procedures. I view unnatural changes to appearance the same way I see defacing a masterpiece as a crime.

I have always found cosmetic surgery to be disturbing. I find the unnatural appearance unsettling.
Lip injections in particular are so creepy looking to me. They are so common where I live. I feel angry and sad when I see women with lip and face injections. Sad because they ruined their appearance (in my opinion) also sad because they feel it was necessary. I feel angry at whomever suggested the injections, like the suggesting party should probably be punched in the mouth (since they like fat lips lol)
Butt and leg implants just look comical and absurd (in my eyes). Breast implants are another example of destroying a work of art.

I find the majority of natural humans attractive in some way. There is almost always something unique and beautiful about each person out there, man or woman. As a man I tend to look more often at women and appreciate a woman’s natural beauty. It might be an unusual perspective to see women over 40 as being more attractive as they age.

It’s not so much that cosmetic enhancement makes me mad, it’s that it is unsettling and disturbing to view, like an uncanny valley look.

 

[NB79]

Yes, women specially, some look so unnatural, other outright like a mummy, and worse now some 25 years olds do it, and then look horrible, i would prefer wrinkles and natural look.
There is some specific surgeries that you don't even notice, like the one that can change the bone of the nose, or idk what else.

 

[jsilver256]

I don't think the surgery per se is disturbing. I can find the reasons for why disturbing.

I live in a US state that is dominated by a religion that believes in achieving early perfection to become God. A dark side of that is that we have a higher capita of plastic surgery than even Los Angeles. We are bested only by Miami. Every single shopping plaza has a "medical spa."

It makes me sad that so many people are trying to attain the unattainable (which is achieving godhood) and a big part of that culture is plastic surgery.

 

[thejuice]

I find it sad when someone who is already beautiful does it to achieve uniformity, they can become characterless.

 

[Judge]

Society's standards of beauty are determined largely by the media and cosmetic industries. Not to establish any uniform aesthetic standard, but simply to enhance their shareholders' equity on a corporate balance sheet.

Leaving me to believe that "Mother Nature" should be left alone to determine standards of beauty rather than any other metric. Apart from seriously understanding that those practicing this brand of medical care can amount from everything from charlatans to skilled professionals. Where none of them can offer any guaranteed results.

I'd much rather assess everyone's sense of beauty based on their own individuality than any sense of "Orwellian Groupthink" that all too often seems related to monetary value.

 

[Levitat0r]

When I was a kid, those jerks put a screw-based device reminiscent of medieval torture in my face to widen my palate, and they never explained to me what they were doing. The same parents and community who were so keen for me to get educated and be socially well-adapted, had no problem stuffing my face with devices that impeded my sleep, caused insomnia, and prevented me from speaking intelligibly, and then they didn't bother to tell me they were altering the structure of my face. In hindsight, I'm entirely content to be odd-looking, and even after they did this, I still had "friends" who made fun of me for sounding like the sloth from Ice Age. Oh, well. I'm proud and content to be not-normal, because I'm not impressed with normalcy. I wound up dating a girl with an unusual face, and I decided that it was beautiful that you could hear the shape of her face in her voice. You don't have to look exactly like everyone else at all.

 

[Outdated]

I never had a clown phobia but I have an inkling of how people could feel about them, they always looked a bit off putting to me. I feel exactly the same when I see women with overdone makeup, they look like they're made of plastic. I sometimes refer to women's makeup as clown paint.

A lot of women that have had plastic surgery on their face give the same effect. A famous one that instantly comes to mind was a star in the BBC TV series Spooks. The woman's face was so stuffed full of silicon that it was almost immobile. She had no expressions at all and when she spoke her mouth hardly moved. She reminded me of the puppets in Thunderbirds.

 

[Peter Morrison]

True, natural beauty is better. For some reason, people have a problem with their age and they want to look younger. The ego is very fragile.

 

[Outdated]

My sister did get a cosmetic procedure done but she's a little bit more switched on than most.

When she was 17 she got a little tattoo of a bird of paradise on her left shoulder blade. It was cute at the time but 20 years and 2 kids later it was stretched, blurred, and sitting up near the top of her shoulder. She was getting in to real estate at that time and she needed to do something to neaten it up. She explored all the existing avenues and then went and told a surgeon what it was she wanted done.

The surgeon tried arguing with her but no one argues with Lou for long if she's got her mind set on something. She got him to cut a 2 inch wide strip of skin out of her lower back then pull the edges together and stitch it up.

It worked really well, it pulled the tattoo back down in to it's original position and then she went to a tattoo parlour and got it redone to look nice and new again. Pulling her skin back that far also had the added bonus of tightening all the skin in her neck and face and it lifted her boobs up.

 

[Jumpinbare]

Sometimes people have severe deformities or get into disfiguring accidents.
(Trigger warning image)

Spoiler

This was AFTER cosmetic surgery but before healing. My skull was exposed in the accident. I was told simple medical treatment without cosmetic surgery would have left extreme scarring.
Here is that area of the forehead 30+ years later.

 

[Cutesie]

Most forms of altering a person's looks disturb me. I'm not frightened by them, per se, just grossed-out and turned-off. We're talking about clowns, piercings (except certain small earrings), tattoos, makeup, face masks (medical and as a costume), unnaturally-dyed hair, etc.

 

[Rocco]

Sometimes people have severe deformities or get into disfiguring accidents.

This is not vanity surgery. I see nothing wrong with medical, reconstructive, or helpful procedures. I’m sorry you had to deal with that trauma. It’s great to see that you healed nicely.

 

[AprilR]

I find the obsession with it weird for sure. People very young and pretty do it bc "they have to start early for it to work" and i don't get it at all

 

[Mary Terry]

I know some girls in their early twenties who are already getting Botox injections to prevent/address wrinkles and filler injections for lines that are barely discernible. I've always wondered what their end game is. Are they going to inject stuff into their faces till the day they die or at some point just quit doing it and allow themselves to age gracefully?

 

[Outdated]

I know some girls in their early twenties....

Many years ago I saw an interview with an old lady who had a warning for young girls. She was in her eighties at the time, but when she was young she had her makeup tattooed on so that she always looked like she was ready to go out. It looked good on her when she was young but when we saw her on TV she looked pretty silly.

She said it dramatically affected her self esteem as she got older and she socialised less and less because her face became an embarrassment.

 

[Hypnalis]

None of this is going to be reversed quickly. The ship has sailed.

But IMO there's something interesting for us to learn via botox:
Botox paralyzes muscles, so an inevitable side-effect of using it to achieve a "younger" is that your face loses mobility. In itself that would not be interesting of course.

But it turns out that there's "active two-way feedback" between the operation of the human physiological system for expressing emotion (much of it via facial expressions), and the capacity to feel emotion.

So emotions drive your facial expressions ... but facial expressions also drive your emotions.

For people who self-harm with botox, one result is that they reduce their ability to feel emotions.

More interesting for us, working on facial mobility can positively affect your emotional state.

The practical advice: work on your smile for yourself. The social benefits are good too, but they're a freebie - any effort pays for itself by brightening your day.

 

[blue_bird]

Not saying that I disagree with you Rocco but since we live in such a materialistic society I think it seems kinda normal that most people give in to the pressure to be beautiful. Not that I agree that it's right but I suppose it is understandable.

I think all cosmetic surgeries and such things like hair transplants, teeth whitening, skin whitening and even increasing your height and this new obsession with being athletic looking and going to the gym is just a product of the trends and values which have become normalized in society. Unfortunately very few people feel secure enough to be themselves with such emphasis on looks being repeatedly hammered into their conscious and subconscious minds by advertising and media. I think a lot of people are not vain but insecure.

I'd bet that if someone who has done extensive procedures lived 60 years ago they'd probably have been okay with looking like themselves. The anti aging and beauty industry is a multi billion dollar industry so you're not going to find the values and standards of society revert back to those of the past.

Honestly what disturbs me more is our move towards transhumanism and adding technology to our body. I suppose one day anyone who doesn't have any inorganic parts in them wil be considered weird and ugly.

 

[Tom]

I feel paying attention to your appearance is fine, even a good idea.

But I stop short of many things that appear or feel artificial to me. I guess some I find disturbing and others just overly vain. Cosmetic surgery for other then medical reasons can be both depending on what it is.

 

[FilterFreq]

Vanity can just be disgusting in itself, if done in excess. Excess tattoos, tanning beds, and everything else. For people who are that obsessed with their appearance, I just tend to feel bad for them more than anything, because they seem to think that the way they appear to the world is really that important -- usually when they looked even better without all of their new 'enhancements'.

Sometimes people need cosmetic surgery for other reasons that are extremely valid, though. So I wouldn't lump everybody together, but the general theme of vanity in our society can be a little gross sometimes. Human connection and respecting each other obviously carries way more weight than our appearance to the world.

 

[Outdated]

Vanity can just be disgusting in itself, if done in excess.

I grew up in a time when it was very popular for men to get tattoos and there was a bit of social pressure that way, but I had the advantage of doing bar work as a second job when I was 18. On Saturday mornings there was always old men in the saloon bar studying their racing form guides and planning what bets they might put on for the day. I got to see what tattoos look like when you get old.