Actually, practically every day I read an article about plastic surgery, and it's due to the fact that I'm so interested in this idea of plastic surgery that I read so much about it. I'm not going to lie and say I haven't thought about plastic surgery since the truth is, I have thought about it, a lot. I've thought about it whenever my parents or my relatives comment on how I look, and I've thought about it when I see other people in the media. I mean, who doesn't want to look like a better, more enhanced, more put together version of themselves?
Then, I come across this article - About Face:Why is South Korea the world's plastic-surgery capital?
In which, I basically realize, this idea of enhancing my face, and improving my looks has been ingrained since I was very young. I grew up with people saying to me, "oh your eyes are pretty small", and it's these off handed comments repeated ad infinitum that has instilled within me this need to change my looks. It has also caused me to look towards plastic surgery as a means to change my life for the better, because at a point I thought that if I changed what I looked like, my life would be smooth sailing.
But, I live in Canada, where your visual appearance is not as important as your persona, your personality. It's a place where you want people to think of you as 'interesting' rather than just 'pretty'. This means that even if I did completely change my face, if I wasn't interesting, I still wouldn't be able to land a job at Google.
This emphasis on personality, and interests, and this 'you' that is not only your appearance, does not happen as much in Asia. School uniforms are rampant, students are always in groups, and people will always want to follow trends. If the school flower* started rocking one lipstick color, probably by the next day everyone else will rock that lipstick color too. I find that in Asia due to some traditional thought by my good ol' man Confucius, individuality is not celebrated. This collectivist ideal to blend in, and to work as a team has existed since you are a pre-schooler. Which is why it completely makes sense, that even as we age, we want to blend in, we want to look pretty not to stand out, but because if we weren't pretty we would actually stand out. Which is a no no.
This idea behind why people get plastic surgery is due to a mindset. A mindset that isn't able to change with a few articles, because this mindset is deep rooted within the society. If anything needs to change, it's the mindset of a nation. To change a nation's original clockwork is not impossible but certainly not able to be achieved in the short run.
There are still days when I think that plastic surgery is the answer to all my problems and it takes a great deal of persuading from the other part of my brain to tell me that even if I did get it, I would not magically be happy. It's just hard for the other part of my brain to tell me that when I'm bombarded with pretty people every time I go on the internet. It ultimately comes down to the fact that I need to find within myself, internally, what I need to be happy, and that probably isn't my external appearance, probably. I have to be happy with what I've got - even if that is two eyes of different sizes.
♚ Yushi
*school flower = literally 校花 = the prettiest girl in school
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