COMMENT:Cosmetic surgery can promote superficial values at the expense of more enduring ones, writes JOHN SHARRY
“For those of us oppressed by the figures of beauty . . .”
– Leonard Cohen
IN AMERICA it is normal to witness glossy magazine advertisements prompting you to try a new medication to improve your mood or concentration or to seek a consultation about cosmetic surgery as a gateway to a “new you” or to feel better about yourself. Currently, prescription drug ads funded by pharmaceutical companies prompt a third of Americans to ask their doctor for a specific medication and most doctors prescribe the medication as requested.
You might initially think this is a good idea, that this means American GPs are somehow treating more illness, but many of these prescriptions (and indeed cosmetic surgeries) are motivated by mental health reasons such as feeling happier or better about oneself, when other simple lifestyle changes such as improving one’s diet, getting more exercise, taking up relaxation, or even spending more time with one’s family would be more effective and enduring. Of course, there is no one interested in glossy adverts for living well.
We have had our own taste for cosmetic surgery advertising with the new TV3 programme The Cosmetic Surgery Show, which, heavily laden with advertising, promotes the surgical solution for many of life’s ills. While cosmetic surgery is a miracle treatment for people who are affected by a medical condition or who have been disfigured or scarred by a physical trauma or accident, it is questionable whether its advance into the area of lifestyle promotion is indeed a good idea.
What the programme does not cover is the many people who are scarred by their treatments or who do not get the emotional benefits they sought, or who get caught into seeking continuous surgery for improvement.
In addition, advertising the idea that you can feel better or more attractive by surgery, also communicates the message that there is something wrong with you as you are. People are compared to impossible standards of beauty such as those of the Hollywood stars, and there is the implication that we should all look the same – and an allowance for being attractive and different is lost.
Ironically, many of those Hollywood icons themselves are equally oppressed by these standards of beauty. They only look the way they do because of extensive grooming and make-up as well as painful long-term cosmetic surgery. In many instances, they do not even look like the way they are presented in the magazines due to the miracle of airbrushing and digital enhancement.
The supreme irony is that these ideals of beauty that are so well presented in glossy advertising do not actually exist in real people at all.
Cosmetic surgery promotes a dubious quick fix for many life problems such as growing old or learning to accept oneself and even establishing meaning in one’s life. Traditionally, these problems would have been resolved by seeking wisdom or a spiritual perspective or to work hard to leave a legacy in one’s career. The fact that more people are likely to seek out cosmetic surgery represents a drift of values in society.
Cosmetic surgery now exists because the values of being youthful or attractive are promoted over those of having good character or making a worthwhile contribution in society.
In a fascinating study of values, the American positive psychologist Martin Seligman asked what were enduring human values that were cross-cultural and accepted by all the great religions and wisdom codes as being central to collective human happiness. Those of us trained as moral relativists might have been surprised to know that there were six that stood out universally, notably wisdom, courage, temperance, humanity, justice and spirituality.
Seligman noted that the values of youthfulness, attractiveness and self- esteem, so promoted in current American culture and also so central in the promotion of cosmetic surgery, were not on the list at all, and in fact would have been regarded in many traditional cultures as frivolous or even as vices! One could speculate that this drift in values provides an explanation of much of the social malaise in America.
Cosmetic surgery as a solution for lifestyle issues is now more popular in Ireland because we are creating a society where superficial values are being promoted at the expense of more enduring ones. This promotion is often subtle, unconscious and not necessarily chosen.
The most disturbing aspect of the TV3 programme for me was that the powerful advertising being used to promote a dubious set of values may have the result of making people feel unhappy with how they are when compared to an unrealistic measure of beauty. While once beauty was thought to be in the eye of the beholder, it now seems it is in the pocket of the advertiser.
Dr John Sharry is child and family psychotherapist and parenting author. He is delivering a series of public parenting talks in the Clarion Hotel IFSC, Dublin 1, starting next Monday. Cost €20 per talk. See www.solutiontalk.ie for details