Beautiful People
Regina Cano
As life expectancies have increased, many humans have been gradually deciding that they need to do reconstruction on what ultimately droops or what they physically lack.
Satisfaction with one’s self especially demands “good taste” in their own appearance, which is also demanded from others. This counteracts aging and narrows — seemingly — the difference between the young and old as the search for solutions to such natural points of decline is intensified.
My curiosity with the issue began when I was undergoing physiotherapy outside of my neighborhood. Entering the facility was a young woman — blond, pretty, and sure of her being so. Time suddenly stopped and those who were attending the two other patients (among them me) suddenly became silent; previously they had been talking among themselves as usual.
The blond went behind a hospital partition, although before entering she was already undoing her bra, until the physiotherapist behind the screen told her: “Sit down on the gurney.” Still, the universe didn’t recover its rhythm for those on this side of the partition.
This was the moment that one of the physiotherapists said to the other in his ear, “She’s a (unintelligible), and takes ultrasound (unintelligible), they look like lumps (unintelligible) it doesn’t excite me.”
Please excuse the “unintelligible” whispering that couldn’t be heard, though the words that could be discerned were probably sufficient. What one of the therapists told me was that the blond had previously gotten silicon breasts and that now it seemed she had lumps, which was as “unpleasant as treating balloons that could explode at any moment,” in his opinion as a man, and which was shared by those who also worked there.
Could it be that these are normal opposed reactions that are beginning in Cuba in light of aesthetic surgery with “silicon” since these have now stopped being done in a hidden fashion (though they are still a small minority) because injections for breasts and lips have been most frequent in the gay world?
How much will this young woman and others have to go through before it’s accepted that some people — the complete owners of their bodies — can mutilate and mistreat them at their whim, since they themselves pay the price for their experiential responsibility with their joys and sufferings.
And they’ll now have plenty to suffer. However, though they can be warned, we shouldn’t treat them like people with smallpox. I think that what should first prevail is respect, even if we don’t agree with something that I suspect is insane.
in my opinion, there`s nothing wrong with cosmetic surgery but you can look your best with a healthy diet.
I am not a fan of body modification in any of it’s forms.
Today body mods can take many forms from plastic surgery to the far less mainstream scarification, branding and even placement of foreign objects under the skin to create patterns and protrusions.
For myself I am still amazed at people who choose to tattoo their bodies. We look upon these People and shake our heads as if we do not understand this new trend when in fact tattoos body mods, branding etc. are as old as Humanity.
It is only because today we live in a Culture that worships the breast that we have breast augmentation as one of our primary forms of modification.
I cannot really condone it but at the same time I know that a person’s mental wellbeing is so closely tied to their physical appearance that many will endure the most intense pain to try and “look better”.
An incredible commentary on the Human condition.
A few years ago, I lived in a homeless shelter in New York City and I was suffering from a few serious health problem, the lesser being a fibroid tumor growing in my uterus that was causing profuse bleeding and intense pain every month. I waited for over two years before the fibroid was removed. This because I did not have health insurance and so was caught up in the neglect of the medical establishment. One day, when trying to make it to a mandatory appointment with a government agency, I lost consciousness on a subway platform while experiencing pain and blood loss. Emergency workers brought me to a hospital. I remember waking up to hospital workers having a conversation. “You look great,” one said. The other replied, “Thank you. I had liposuction.” After that experience, I waited another year for the removal of the fibroid. When we live in a time when many people do not get their basic medical needs met and often die, why are people having unnecessary cosmetic surgery that is often destructive? The answer is that there is far too much carelessness within the medical establishment. The most precious and rare find is a good doctor.