Daft Old Duffer returns with his weekly column. Ed
According to the National Press one in three women have undergone surgical procedure for cosmetic reasons.
I rather suspect this is a case, in ascending order, of exaggerations, gilding the lily a bit and statistics. It does however back up my thinking following the Only Way Is Essex show.
What fascinated me most about that show was the apparent desire of all the perfectly nice looking women to turn themselves into clowns.
Not just boobs, but botox too
Apart from their trowelled-on make-up, it seems to me their principal pre-occupation was with who had the biggest boobs, and when to add yet more plastic padding to their own deformities.
Not only boobs of course, botox-paralysed foreheads, lips like plumped up cushions, noses straightened, eyelashes so long, heavy and mascarared that must make it difficult to keep eyelids up.
Hair extended, re-coloured and curled out of all natural shape – the list presumably is only limited by the availability of the next surgical operation to become fashionable.
Even sexual goddess wants change
Easy to claim these grotesques are an outlandish exception, an enclave of weirdo’s, but I have an uneasy feeling that’s not so. I think they are merely the forefront of a growing tendency among the ladies.
I read just recently that Beyonce, the very embodiment of sexual gorgeousness, yearns to be whiter.
If she is dissatisfied with her appearance, what of the other youngsters worrying themselves sick inside their lovely brown skins? As well as all the white kids yearning to be brown.
Nose jobs, boob jobs, get a real job
Then there are all the lasses promising themselves nose jobs and boob jobs as soon as they’ve got themselves a job, or their parent’s permission.
Mostly just chatter perhaps, a desire to be fashionable, but the urge is there nonetheless.
It’s in the air – going under the knife is perfectly normal, everyday and natural. Presumably women have generally been uneasy about their physical appearance ever since whoever made sex optional. Hence lipstick and powder, hair extensions and eye paint.
Why do women want to change?
What seems to be happening now though is that, in these days of female independence, of ‘I’ll get married and have babies when I’m ready, not before,’ women seem to be even more intent on changing themselves into someone different.
Whilst the cosmetic surgeons stand, knife in hand, waiting to oblige. Cosmetic surgery has of course done much good, transformed the lives of many unhappy people.
The problem however is that there are no checks and balances. If you want something cut off your body, or plumped up with plastic, injected or reshaped, you’ll find someone ready to do it for you. On the instalment plan if need be.
We can’t change it
What happens when every young woman in a social set has fitted herself out with oversized mounds of flesh and plastic on her chest? What happens when that deformity becomes the norm? Who’s first in the queue for the next size up?
No amount of reassuring noises from us males is going to make any difference to this growing obsession. For the ladies don’t torture themselves for our benefit.
They do it because they are in competition with one another, with Cheryl Cole and Sinetta and Aishwarya Rai. It’s no longer enough to be beautiful and desirable.
The magazines and the cosmetic surgery profession assure them they can be perfect if they but try – and pay. And perfection is what they yearn for. Whatever the current notion of perfection happens to be.
