Body Image: Are we willing to go under the knife?

Welcome back to our Body Image Survey analysis. In February, the Silver & Grace community completed ten questions related to body image. If you are just joining the series now, you can catch up by reading these two posts:

The survey results are in
Do we love our bodies?

Now, onto today’s survey question.

Would you consider, or have you had plastic surgery?

Only 28% of you would consider, or have had plastic surgery. But, admittedly this was a pretty vague question. In terms of body image, I was thinking about ‘vanity’ surgery. I am pretty sure we can reduce the percentage even more, given some people have had, or would consider the following:

• breast reconstruction after a masectomy
• breast reduction
• re-constructive and cosmetic surgery resulting from accidents and burns
• correcting birth defects

So, for sake of argument, let’s say that we get this down to under 20% of the respondants have had, or would consider, cosmetic surgery for the sake of changing something about their body they do not like.

Compare this to the Do we love our bodies? post, in which 60% of women said they do not like their bodies. It appears, therefore, that while we may not like our bodies, we are unwilling to do anything surgical about it.

Or, it could also be that what we don’t like about our bodies cannot be fixed with surgery. Several of the discussion participants talked about their bodies not behaving the way they want, be it an illness or athletic performance.

The results were pretty consistent across age groups. Here’s a breakdown of the ‘no’ responses:

• Under 40 years old – 63%
• 40 – 49 years old – 81%
• 50 – 59 years old – 76%
• 60 – 69 years old – 85%
• 70 years old and older – 33%

Our senior ladies appear to be more receptive to cosmetic surgery. This could very well be the case, but they also had signficantly less respondants, so perhaps not representative of this age group.

If we could expand our survey results to the general populace, then 20% of the people are getting a lot of body work done. According to The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, in 2008 in the United States, 10 million cosmetic procedures were performed. They included:

• breast augmentation
• liposuction
• cosmetic eye surgery
• rhinoplasty (had to look this one up; it’s a nose job)
• tummy tuck

I briefly flirted with the idea of cosmetic procedures. I had severe acne as a teenager and my back is a mass of pock marks. On my upper back, in particular, there is barely a smooth surface to be found. So, I did consider dermabrasion. However, thirty years after the fact, it hardly seems worth it. I am bothered a bit when I put on a nice open back dress, but I give my head a shake, and thank my lucky stars that the scarring was confined to my back, and not my face.

Breast augmentation fascinates me. Not because I would ever want it. Quite the opposite actually. I like my breasts. I consider them on the small size, but I am quite happy with that. I am almost 47, but I can get away with wearing a tight sexy dress with no bra. Sure, the girls aren’t as perky as they used to be, but when I am exercising properly and maintain upper body muscle, they flesh out quite nicely.

I was at a party recently and there was a boob jar on the kitchen table. Literally a ceramic jar shaped like a pair of breasts. It was a piggy bank to save money for breast implants. I looked around the room, and every single woman I saw had perfectly acceptable breasts. Sure, the breasts were all shapes and sizes, but so were all the other body parts. But each woman was beautiful in her uniqueness.

It saddened me that the jar was sitting on the table of this particular vibrant and beautiful woman. But it saddened me even more that someone thought to create a boob jar in the first place. The message being ‘You are not good enough. Save money. Fix it.’

When the Dove Love Your Body adverstisements first came out, I cut out pictures of the near naked older women and pasted them into my journals.

Wrinkles. Pot bellies. Saggy breasts. Loose skin.

Radiant auras.

I’m going to look just like these women, I wrote.

Have your say:

Your turn to analyze the results of the survey. Agree with my analysis? Disagree? Something to add?

More information!

Here is the posting schedule for the rest of the survey results.

April 7 – Are we sexy?
April 14 – How do we view our body parts?
April 21 – Who do we compare ourselves to?
April 28 – Are we satisfied with our weight?
May 5 – Are we looking forward to aging?

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