Do women use Botox to compete or to fix a lousy self-image?

July 15th, 2008, 2:00 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Colin Stewart

Is the popularity of Botox and plastic surgery caused by women’s competitiveness or by women’s reaction to professionals telling them they’re ugly?

Two women debate the pros and cons of cosmetic medicine in two lively essays from down under.

Travel journalist and corporate speaker Rachael Oakes-Ash is pro-Botox and pro-plastic surgery:

Beauty has always been about competition. There’s a constant comparison among girls about thighs, butts and hair colour from the moment we step into the schoolyard. No wonder teenage girls go to such lengths to look the same, lest they attract the deadly gaze of a competitor.

The obsession among young women wanting breast implants before their breasts have even finished growing seems imposed not so much by men as by other women.

Journalism student Rachel Hills is anti:

If you think injecting a foreign substance into your face, or reshaping the tip of your nose will make you happy, I’m not about to barricade the surgery doors to stop you. I do, however, have, ahem, a bone to pick with the process that gets people to that point.

Take [a recent video of Restylane injections for a 26-year-old] New York handbag designer. Upon being informed by her dermatologist, Dr Bobby, of the smile lines she never knew existed, she asks how bad they are on a scale of one to 10. “About a seven,” he replies.

She is horrified, “A seven?”

“Twenty-six is a bitch,” she adds, without irony.

The two esssays are here in full, in the online version of the Sun-Herald of Sydney, Australia. (Free signup required.) Hills’ essay is also on her blog.

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