When artificial beauty is tempting

I read a factual story about two weeks ago. A British lady went to the United States to be operated on to enhance the size of her buttock (as I understood) and died after receiving an injection. To look beautiful is a natural desire as old as mankind. This is more so for women. Conventionally, men are believed to be not bothered about their faces and figures and a rough looking man is a handsome man. But times have changed. Men have also become face and figure conscious. To fulfill the desire to look beautiful, people buy and use all kinds of herbal products, cosmetics and what not. Those with plenty of money and time on their hands or an excess craving to enhance their looks /figure, go one step ahead and get a surgical intervention done. There are numerous procedures available which many men and women all over the world are making use of. Plastic surgery is basically a branch of surgery to help people remove scars or disfigurement caused due to trauma, burns, birth defects e.t.c. But now it is increasingly being used to improve the figure and looks of individuals. Liposuction, i.e. surgical removal of excess fat from the thighs and or abdomen is one of them. I sometimes wonder, is there any wisdom in this. First you become fat to the extent that your middle assumes an ungraceful look. Then you spend lots of money and undergo a painful surgery to remove that extra fat. Augmentation of the breast size by means of artificial implants is yet another very popular intervention, opted by many women with the means to do so. Individuals having scars or blemishes or many pimples on the face undergo derm abrasion. In this the entire skin of the face and neck is scraped off. The person rests in a quiet room avoiding strong light, dust and germs till a new skin comes. It is done in the hope that the new skin coming will be free from the problems and the individual will get a clear good complexion. Some people opt for changes in the size of buttocks, mostly reducing it if very wide and filling out if very skinny. But none of these procedures are very safe. They all carry the potential risks of any surgery. At the beginning, there can be reaction to the anesthetic agent, used to make the surgery painless. This reaction can be distressful and even fatal. During surgery, there is risk of excess bleeding due to injury to any major blood vessel. A major nerve can be cut causing loss of sensation or paralysis of affected part. After surgery, there is risk of bleeding from the fresh postoperative wound. The wound may get contaminated causing sepsis. In case of liposuction, there can be herniation from the operative site later on. Adhesions can form internally due to fibrous reaction of the immune system leading to occlusion of the bowels, another surgical problem. In women who have breast implants, the implants can rupture after 2 to 3 years. Thus the leak of silicone or saline can irritate the surrounding skin. Similar to the abdomen, fibrous tissue can form around the implant, distorting the shape and making it hard and painful. In all these procedures, there can be wrinkling over the operated site which can be as ungainly as the condition before. This wrinkling occurs as the skin over that part becomes loose after excess fat is removed. Another surgery is needed to correct it with all attendant risks. Fat may not be removed evenly from thighs or buttocks which gives an ungainly appearance after the operation. Moreover one has to take many precautions, antibiotics and pain killers after the operation to prevent the pain and potential complications. Thus before undergoing such a procedure, one should analyze it. Is it worthwhile to undergo so much distress, expose oneself to so many risks, just for few centimeters of extra or less girth wherever in the body! After all a woman or man is not merely the abdomen or breasts, there is more substance to a human being. A person, who eats healthy food, exercises adequately, is disciplined and relaxed mentally automatically looks fresh and attractive. Therefore one should avoid these interventions for a perceived enhancement of beauty as there are more disadvantages than gains. rachna212002@yahoo.co.uk