Why should cosmetic surgery be banned?

A minimum requirement should be a total ban on encouraging and recruiting people to undergo such treatments, and the advertising of cosmetic surgery is fair. Can it be argued that undergoing a risky cosmetic surgery procedure to look your best could be one of the most irrational and foolish decisions a healthy person can make? It could be said that surgery is an invasive traumatic attack and even under the best of circumstances it worsens the person before there is a chance of improvement. Usually, pain, swelling, bruising, and scar tissue form. With no guarantee of success, the outcome can have terrible, life-changing consequences. Plastic and cosmetic surgery is neither good nor bad.

Both types of surgery have advantages and disadvantages. The most famous in this regard is the work of Kathy Davis, which portrays women as active agents who negotiate and carefully control their surgeries, rather than being mere puppets of patriarchy. We have also suggested that, even when surgery is going well, the surgeon's professional ethics when it comes to normalizing this type of invasive interventions for aesthetic purposes has a detrimental social effect and, therefore, also for this reason, cosmetic surgery should not be included in the definition of “appropriate medical treatment” as a means of justifying it. People can undergo cosmetic surgery to change the appearance of their face or body, such as nose surgery or a facelift.

Cosmetic surgery can be considerably cheaper outside the UK, and a recent report suggests that the most popular procedures, such as nose operations (rhinoplasty) and breast augmentation, may be approximately £2,000 cheaper in the Czech Republic and Poland than in the UK. In Baker's opinion, better regulation would not significantly reduce any of these damages, so he has argued that all highly invasive cosmetic surgery should be considered a criminal offence and, therefore, prohibited because is inherently harmful. Currently, cosmetic surgery in the UK is regulated in exactly the same way as medically necessary surgery. In response to Keogh's review, there have been some advances, but not enough, to fully protect cosmetic surgery consumers.

People may need to consider whether the potential risks of plastic or cosmetic surgery outweigh the benefits, as well as how the surgery may affect their physical and mental health. Cosmetic surgery reinforces and increases concern for body image and the beauty standards prescribed by culture, contributing to a youth culture that despises aging and older people and defends culturally specific beauty standards. In light of the limitations to enforcing effective legislation globally, this national response may be the best hope of avoiding harm from the global cosmetic surgery industry. When a person decides to travel abroad to undergo cosmetic surgery, there are several reasons why the usual risks of surgery may increase, but there is little clear evidence to suggest that cosmetic surgery abroad is necessarily dangerous.

And although all surgery involves risks, the risks of cosmetic surgery should be weighed more carefully, since they cannot be justified by health reasons, but serious risks are assumed for purely aesthetic reasons. According to an important analysis of cosmetic surgery carried out by the Medical Defense Union (MDU), more and more patients are suing cosmetic surgeons for errors made during operations designed to improve their appearance.

Sylvia Cinnamon
Sylvia Cinnamon

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