"Tell me what you don’t like about yourself"

If there are any Nip/Tuck fans out there, you’ll recognize this inquiry as what plastic surgeons Dr. Troy and Dr. McNamara use to initiate their client consultations. The popular television show Nip/Tuck dramatizes the lives of both Dr. Troy and McNamara, their families, and their plastic surgery clients by means of sexual trysts, blackmail, incest, murder, and other twisted plot development schemes. The program, while undermining the veneer of aesthetic refinement by scrutinizing the dark side of plastic surgery, comments upon the American conception of beauty and how society today has the ever increasing ability to construct this ideal at a negotiable cost.

I myself have considered plastic surgery on several occasions and I have wondered if such physical enhancement would distort what others thought about me. I worried if my friends and family would be disappointed in my decision to resort to such drastic, artificial beautification most likely brought on by societal and media pressures to achieve the American image of what is beautiful. Then I wondered if their initial alarm and objections would be overcome by the sheer normality and commonness of plastic surgery itself. Aside from others' reactions to my hypothetical decision, I wondered if by going through with any kind of plastic surgery if I would be subjecting myself to the public exploitation of my, and hundreds of other young men and women’s, way of gaining greater self-esteem as I would become a product of a billion dollar industry which profits off of, and possibly manipulates, people’s insecurities. Thereafter, I would belong to a not so select group of “plastic happy” consumers who look to going under the knife or a facial injection of poisonous substance for a quick pick-me-up. Or worse, I would be classified as every other California girl who wanted a little extra so that she could compete with the other beautiful women and their identical lips, breasts, noses, stomachs, and asses.

There’s only one solution to this problem: either be happy with what you have or find a doctor skilled enough to make everything look amazingly real. Then move to another country, change your name, and erase your memory like how they did in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because let's face it, once you go under the knife for reasons of pure vanity you will be forever branded as partly or even altogether fake.