As a society, we should be used to the normalcy of surgically enhanced chests, an enchanting upturned nose, voluptuous lips, a perfect face and derriere or a botox fix. People who decide to go under the knife to make themselves look and feel better are no longer ashamed to admit it. The numbers of men and women walking around shopping malls and reclining on beachfront loungers with the tell-tale adhesive plaster tape bridging one side of their face to the other has ballooned – thanks in large part to the media.
The past few years has seen extraordinary success in reality-based TV programmes and cosmetic surgeons have reaped some of the rewards. Take for instance the TV show Beauty Clinic on Future where beasts are made beautiful by the wondrous surgeons at Lebanon’s Hazmieh International Medical Centre. These days you can change pretty much anything on your body. Apparently, HIMC even has the best bottom implant surgeon in the world. So go for that perfect Brazilian butt, if you’re willing to go through excruciating pain and identity transformation. Recently it has become pretty commonplace to be made to look like Nancy Ajram, Haifa Wehbe or Waël Kfoury at the wave of a surgeon’s magic knife.
But possibly my favourite cosmetic enhancement show is MTV’s I Want a Famous Face where celebrity-obsessed teenagers go through surgery just to look like their idols, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Elvis Presley. MTV is more ‘responsible’ than others, showing results that have gone drastically wrong – a more realistic rendition of the life altering operation.
Back to the uproar surrounding the loans in Lebanon (the piece of news actually made it onto a National Public Radio broadcast in the US). Though the bank in question likes to point out that ‘beauty is no longer a luxury’, that is not necessarily true. You still need to earn an income to be able to apply, as well as needing a guarantor for operations above 3,000 USD. Oh, and you have to be younger than the ripe age of 64-years-old in order to become eligible. The bank is probably scared that you may not be around long enough to pay the instalments in lieu of scientists not being able to actually make you chronologically younger just yet.
Nonetheless, there is a philosophical question that haunts the world of cosmetic surgery. One that not even Jean-Paul Sartre, Descartes or Freud managed to answer. In the battle of nature versus nurture, what actually has the moral upper-ground? I would answer that question by quoting face-lifted beauty and vixen Joan Collins, “It [plastic surgery] is the plain woman’s revenge… I think that everybody should do what they want to do – if they want lips like a trout, let them.”
