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.

Yes I agree!
The BBC story was fascinating – and scary – and saddening.