Final Draft: An essay on ‘Appearance Modification’Bhamini Nadarajan10/18/01“Context is everything. When you put appearance up against other lifesatisfactions, its light dims” says Priscilla Grant in her article, “Face time”. In SouthIndia, where I grew up, appearance modifications although in its milder forms weremostly connected to important aspects of life. Women adorned themselves with flowers,

bindi

( a dot on the forehead usually red in color ) and all kinds of ornaments made primarily of the sacred metal – gold – and men wore their traditional white clothing.These adornments and clothing took significance as if to acknowledge and honor thesacredness of important life aspects such as marriage, child birth and forms of other celebrations of life. The young only imitated their adults for enhancing their ownappearance and beauty. Though the ritual adornments were considered auspicious ineverday life, most of them have become restricted to festival and ceremonial days whileother forms of appearance modifications like modern hair style and make-up have takensignificance in their place. Consequently, beauty is less of a celebration of life and moreof conforming to the fast changing fashions and trends. Although beauty has manystandards in different cultures, in modernized societies however we tend to hold somenarrow and even harmful beauty standards, removed from the context of life in a larger perspective, a result of which we also incline to respect our bodies far less.We often find it difficult to find our own voice and values and integrate it in our lives, which will bring peace and harmony in spite of the desires we have. And it isdifficult more so in a fast-paced living. Instead of taking the time to find our self the person we are, we give away our personal power to those that are external such as media,

friends, relatives and other groups of people. And as we tend to allow our external worldshape our image of our own body, we try to modify our body image, according to whatwe think is appreciated and accepted by others. But changing appearance throughextreme methods such as cosmetic surgeries bring more harm than good to one’s health.I have had an unpleasant experience with cosmetic dentistry of having braces a few years back. As I had felt conscious, of my teeth as being oddly big, that others would see it thatway, I felt confident that braces would fix it. But having braces only left some of myteeth out of alignment and partly weakening them; I wish a little that my dentist hadwarned me off from any cosmetic modifications. Courage to face life’s challenges is oneto be valued but I wish I had dared less to have braces. It had shocked me that I may soonlose some of my teeth for the way the braces were working on them, after which Idecided to have my braces pulled out. This was a price indeed for me to learn to respectmy body as it is and enjoy its health. Life is filled with meaning even if we do not want tofocus on getting our appearances changed and especially if the result is painful, we may begin to notice what really is important in our lives. I had not realized my inner self thatwas enjoying the gift of having a healthy set of teeth that was perfect and served its purpose.In a web discussion forum – http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/English/talking_point/newsid 1102000/1102038.stm

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titled “When is cosmetic surgery right for teenagers?”, a person named Catherine of England says, “if anyone had offered me free plastic surgeryat the age of 16, I would've had my whole face and body done, never mind my flat chest.Luckily, like most other people I was poor, so I had to start liking myself instead.”Although our decision-making is forced on us when we are left with less or no options,such decisions may remain to be one of the easiest and best decisions that we ever make

for ourselves. It is ironical that with affluence and freedom we do not necessarily makeright choices, such as for our health and ultimately for our life. Modern society has thefreedom that has never been before. And we could hardly have missed coming across the popular ad caption, “the possibilities are endless”, which actually indicates a wide rangeof material choices made available to us. But if the choices that we want to make cannotcreate health and harmony for us, then we are also not

free

from the influences thatactually restricts the natural flow of our life. And if we remain free, we may not

be possibly obsessed, dissatisfied or helpless with our body image, at least as long as weremain healthy – for health is happiness and it for our happiness that we need freedom.With a realization of the risks involved in cosmetic surgeries, primarily from myown experience with cosmetic dentistry, I often feel deceptive of the media whenever feedback about the procedures of cosmetic surgeries are given – including those of breastimplants, liposuction, cosmetic dentistry, eyelid and face lifts – their side-effectsmentioned in a tone of understatement. Consumerism thrives successfully in our societyand so are cosmetic surgeries, a product of consumerism. So it should surprise us littlethat it is not insisted that the

side-effects

of cosmetic surgeries are in truth

major effects

on our health and at times can even take away our lives. In her article, “Tummy tucksaside, it's still not a perfect world”, Joanna Sullivan states a disheartening story of aneighteen year old graduate who lost her life because of the complications of liposuctionsurgery, which she underwent to get rid of some of her body fat from her stomach andunder her chin. More than seven million and four hundred thousand Americans had someform of cosmetic surgery in the year two thousand, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, “but then I read stories about the horrible mishaps that those ads never disclose”, adds Sullivan.