The Original Post:
Turn back the clock. Roll back the years. Erase those wrinkles for good! The most profitable industry of the modern age has to be the age-defying business - from beetroot to Botox, salmon to surgery, vainglorious ‘miracle’ cures abound. Cue a self-righteous rant of moral indignation or a bitter tirade about ‘what’s so good about looking young?’. Nope, not here. I happily admit that I add my own regular contributions to the rental of the Fountain of Youth, and if anybody happens to think I look any younger than my grand old age of 43, then all well and good. Frankly, though, if someone thinks I look 56, I really don’t give a toss – life is literally far too short to spend it denying the years you’ve been lucky enough to have. I have great sympathy, then, for those of us (the majority of whom will undoubtedly have been women) who received this year’s second biggest Christmas gift after the Xbox 360: plastic surgery vouchers, no less, at the clinic of your choice. Imagine opening that particular envelope on Christmas day: “Darling, here’s the boob job you (or rather, I) have been dreaming about”. “Sweetheart, your nose is no longer going to get in our way”. “Cuddlekins, that spare tyre is going to be sucked out by a man in a white coat”. Okay, if you’ve been bleating on and on about your yen to get under the knife for the past five years, you may have been given what you deserve. But what if the recipient’s apparent thirst for such drastic change was actually a cry for help? A genuinely thoughtful gift for one who feels so bad about herself that she’s prepared to risk her life having her boobs enlarged is a course of therapy – if, that is, some genuine affection and reassurance didn’t work in the first place. Or
consider the worst-case scenario: the voucher beneficiary who didn’t even know that such a ‘surprise’ was under the tree; in this case, to call such a ‘gift’ sinister would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Still, we’ve been led to believe that plastic surgery is nothing more than one small step up from using a decent moisturiser, when in other circumstances a major operation is an outcome we all pray we can manage to avoid. But such is life in the zeroes; the needy, greedy 1980’s and the touchy-feely decade that followed have combined to create the ‘Because You’re Worth It’ generation – but in new millennium terms, that mantra translates as ‘Because You’re Never Going To Be Good Enough’.
In each episode of Channel 4’s ‘groundbreaking’ reality TV show ‘Ten Years Younger’ (which hits our screens again in February, just in case the ritual humiliation of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ isn’t quite hitting your chadenfreude spot), uber-haridan Nicky Hambleton-Jones – one-part pantomime dame and two-parts cartoon dominatrix (as all our female ‘lifestyle’ gurus tend to be, these days) - takes a lacklustre, downtrodden member of the public and subjects them to the gaze of 100 similarly dull passers-by in order to glean an opinion on how old Mrs Subjugated is. Inevitably, the poll results summarise an estimation of at least 10 years older. Ms H-J then bullies Mrs S through an ‘action plan’ that blithely combines surgery with stylists before throwing Frankenstein back into the plebs lair again. A ‘good result’ is when some unknown bloke in a bar guesses that Mrs S is actually 38, and not her real age of 42. Mrs S then, predictably, cries tears of gratitude. And such is the level of our own self-judgement, self-awareness, self-esteem and pretty much all the other self- prefixed words that we’re forced to swallow when we’re being fed the ‘Because You’re Worth It’ diet – it’s as thought the age of supposed self enlightenment never happened. Turn back the clock? If only we really could …
CHH said:
I greatly enjoyed reading your post regarding plastic surgery in the modern age. Much of what you said in the blog reminded me of a quote I recently heard. E.E. Cummings once said, "To be nobody-but-yourself- in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting." The theorist Raymond Williams once explained that culture is created on two vastly differing scales, the large scale, meaning the high culture ideals that are created by those in power and the small scale, the individual ideals that act to separate each one of us from everyone else. In the first sense, culture can be looked at as a whole, created on a large scale by those who hold power. There are certain "known," facts that are thought to be true and regarded by society as just that, true. For example, Mercedes Benz, while the engines may be no better than Honda, is held in higher esteem than most other car companies. The name is what gives it its worth much like plastic surgery, where only if you are a certain size, do you maintain worth. The second sense, however, the individual sense is what is supposed to separate us as individuals. The idea that you are who you are because of the choices you make. While society continually imposes messages and poster-perfect ideals in every area of life from shampoo to vacation destinations, individuality is a result of the selecting and choosing to represent one's true character. The problem is, however, media and television shows that reinforce what E.E. Cummings quote is all about. Shows like "Ten Years Younger," are only trying to make us look like everyone else, but that post-perfect image is unrealistic and only until you are enlisted as a plastic surgeon patient can you attain that image, an image that will make you look like most want to or already do look like. Such shows everywhere are telling us to fear the natural aging process, to see it as a negative thing and to do anything possible to prevent it from happening to you. The thing that each of us need to keep in mind is that idea that we are lucky that we have enough time in the day to worry about such petty issues. In some corners of the world, that would be a dream come true. For some, they are constantly worrying about the next meal, or pure survival. How then do we convince the world to stop subjecting others to a mere gaze, and start to actually see them for who they are? Is change even possible?
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