Cosmetic Surgery - Highlighting What Women Really Want (Not a D-Cup)
Posted: Friday, May 28, 2010
by Ananda Mahony
Vitale Natural Skin Care
A recent landmark study has highlighted the fact that many women undergoing cosmetic surgery have very little idea about what to expect from their procedure nor the associated risks. Unlike plastic surgery, which is performed to repair damage, cosmetic surgery is not necessary, rather it is a voluntary choice by the patient the majority of which are women. In Australia, anyone with a medical degree can perform cosmetic surgery from injections such as Botox to quite invasive procedures and currently there is no requirement to be a for the doctor performing the procedure to be a qualified surgeon.
1. A body feature they have been bothered about for a long time e.g. small breast size or a large nose
2. Changes that are the result of physical changes over time or due to a particular event e.g. a stretched stomach after childbirth
3. Aging - women perceiving they look older than they feel
When approaching Doctors about cosmetic surgery, the study revealed that women generally don't know what the surgery entails and therefore they don't know what questions to ask. Many women keep quiet about having surgery due to feeling embarrassed and as a result they don't receive the emotional and practical support they need. Ironically, the research has also shown that Doctors are not understanding why women are there. What was interesting is that men and women have different ideas about the ideal breast size. In previous studies, men have shown a preference for larger breasts than women. In Australia we have a situation where most of the Doctors performing cosmetic procedures are men and most of the patients are women and so unfortunately the end result is that there are now lots of women with larger implants than they originally wanted, for example, a women goes in asking for a C-cup and comes out with a D-cup. And so now in their perception instead of standing out because they have small breasts, they stand out because their breast are large. In most cases, women don't want to look like movie stars or like another person, they want to look like better versions of themselves.
Dr Parker says there are wide ranging implications from the study. The first issue is that we need to actually find out how many women are undergoing cosmetic procedures annually as currently there is no way of tracking this information. Secondly, she identified the need for industry-wide quality control measures to be put in place. In addition, it is essential that women undergoing cosmetic surgery have access to unbiased information about their procedures. This gives them the knowledge to ask the right questions and make better individual choices. Finally a comprehensive list of complaints needs to be gathered Australia-wide so that the magnitude of the issues associated with these kinds of procedures can be identified.
Anecdotally there is a strong rumor that one of the reasons for increased medical insurance premiums across the board is due to the high number of complaints from dissatisfied patients following cosmetic surgery. Essentially the lack of regulation, lack of education and secrecy surrounding this industry is costing the entire medical industry dearly from a financial perspective and costing the women involved from an emotional perspective.
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Your organic skin expert http://vitaleblog.org. As a naturopath Ananda Mahony ND has been involved in the natural skin care industry for many years both developing and sourcing specialist products. She specialises in the treatment of skin disorders such as acne, eczema, rosacea and dermatitis as well as anti-aging
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)The whole cosmetic surgery industry is very scary to me. I understand why women want to look younger etc. - so do I! - but I've seen so many dreadful results, that I don't think I'd have the courage to try it myself.
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