I am participating in 31 Days of Five Minute Free Writes 2019 (all of my submissions can be found here).
Today’s prompt is: BETTER
The things people will do to look “better” amaze me.
I was just listening to a report on the BBC World Service about Brazilian butt lifts, and how there are 20,000 of them per year in the US. I didn’t hear the beginning of the story, but I did hear the reporter describing how in some cultures the pressure to be curvaceous in that way is intense. I heard them say how dangerous the procedure is.
I can assure you, wanting a bigger or differently shaped derriere has *never* been a desire of mine!
Sometimes when I see famous people (usually women, but sometimes men) who are film stars and it is clear they have had their faces modified, I am aghast. I get the pressure to stay abreast in an industry that so values beauty, but the surgical treatments so often change something about their essence — their ability to be expressive and the intangible “something” that made them so inviting as a personality in the first place.
“Better” is definitely relative. Plastic surgery wouldn’t be thriving as an industry if a certain perspective on “better” hadn’t exploded so much in our world.
But I have to think these people, in many cases, might have lost touch with the best parts of themselves.
Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.
Yes I agree!
The BBC story was fascinating – and scary – and saddening.