Did you notice the pressure our popular culture places on young girls? And I am not talking about their hair or their clothing. I am talking about the pressure to surgically alter their appearance.


According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2012 more than 236,000 cosmetic procedures were performed on our youth, primarily girls, between the ages of 13 and 19. Certainly, there are instances when such surgery is appropriate and there are both physical and psychology benefits as a result. But in many cases, far too many cases, these surgeries are not at all necessary. We have made the idea of surgically altering one's appearance almost the norm. Yet, I was particularly struck to see that in China, things are not so different.

While in China for my son's wedding, he pointed out to me television and radio advertisements promoting plastic surgery to young Asian girls. As in the States, Chinese girls are told that they are not attractive enough as they are and that they should alter their appearance in order to conform to an image so melded, merged and Photoshopped that you would be hard-pressed to find such a person in the real world. The ads in China actually tell girls: Your mother is unhappy because of how you look; you will never get a husband because of how you look; you will never be a success in your career because of how you look. The most common surgeries are double eyelid surgery and nose surgeries. Also quite common are surgeries that alter the jaw in order to create a heart shaped face. In many middle-class Chinese families, such surgeries are as commonplace as braces. Often girls will get these procedures as graduation gifts from their parents. (Not so different from here, is it?)

I did not have to look very far to see this phenomenon for myself. We had a few errands to run, some of which took us to a few of the very high-end malls that dominate every Chinese city we visited. I noticed young girls with surgical bandages across their newly shaped, Western noses, shopping with their friends. Riding in a taxi, the backs of the driver's seats are covered with advertisements. One was an ad for plastic surgery showing before and after pictures of a young girl. The message was clear even if I could not read the Chinese. The way you look isn't good enough.

All this preys on the insecurity that comes with coming of age. We all can remember the insecurity of our own youth. We remember and are grateful to those who reflected back to us our self-worth, believed in us and what we could accomplish. Today, we have a popular culture that tells our youth that they need to change how they look in order to be of worth. Why do we allow it? We have these children who are already beautiful, perfect, individual beings, and yet we complicity support a culture that tells them otherwise at every shopping mall and every online store, a culture that pressures them to emulate an image that does not exist and that bleeds them of their individuality.

And the supposed benefit of improved self-esteem? The few studies that have looked at this find that, over time, there is little to no difference between the self-esteem of girls who have undergone some cosmetic procedure and those who have not. Bottom line, according to Dr. Richard D'Amico, a plastic surgeon from Englewood, N.J., as quoted in the New York Times, "You don't get self-esteem from a scalpel." Most teens will grow into themselves, which is all part of growing up. So let's give them that opportunity. Instead of promoting surgical alteration, let's provide safe, bully-free environments where our kids can learn to celebrate themselves and their uniqueness. Let's be more cognizant of the images on our Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bags and maybe not shop there or at other such places that diminish our girls. Let's nurture our lovable children into loving adults.
