Ad Feminem

Cosmetic Castrations Banned For Thai Boys

Thailand has temporarily banned cosmetic castrations, as it ponders measures to ban the operation for boys. Removal of the testes leads to a loss in the production of testosterone and is considered a quick and effective transexuality measure. The irreversible procedure only takes 15 minutes and can cost as little as $50, consistent with Thailand's position as a hugely popular destination for plastic surgery tourism.

In typical Thai fashion, the ban is not being universally observed and a permanent ban is simply expected to drive the practice underground. But it has been welcomed as a move helps protect boys at an impressionable age. Jetsada Taesombat of the South-East Asian Consortium on Gender, Sexuality and Health commented:
"The pressure to look beautiful is imposed equally on everyone by an adult-controlled media. Witness all the slimming and fitness centres and clinics offering nose jobs and eye-lid operations, all catering to young people."

Breathy Yesssssss

A new radio commercial today, for the Cosmetic Surgery Center. With a breathy repetition of "Yessss" in between each announcement of the discount body special (new nose and breast aug for only $6500), this time the tactic was seduction.  That's not to say it's clear just who those breathy yesses were supposed to seduce.  It's tempting to assume that the demographic was the men who might pay for customized arm charm construction.  In contrast to the inane, hot and heavy voiceover, at first the language of the commercial seemed clearly aimed at potential female customers. But upon further consideration, if we examine the language as if it speaks to a male purchaser rather than a female recipient, its objectifying effect gets magnified.

Yessss. $6500, yessss. $6500 for new breasts and a new nose.  Yessss, $6500 for bigger, sexier breasts.  Call the Cosmetic Surgery Center now. 1-800-Hot-3939.  That's 1-800-HOT-3939.  Yessss. $2900 for breast augmentation!  Yessss, just $2900 for bigger, more beautiful breasts.

The effect of listening to this language is that one can start to imagine calling the number just to buy some disembodied breasts, as if could snatch up a pair of breasts without the bothersome body that’s usually attached to them. 

Additionally, this ad turns on a couple of hidden assumptions, both taking for granted and reinforcing the idea that the bigger the breasts, the sexier, more beautiful the breasts, and that fake is preferable to natural.  We may take it for granted at this point that augmented breasts are sexier than real breasts, but we shouldn’t.  This assumption is not necessarily a valid one – especially if you’ve spent any time hanging out in Los Angeles or strip clubs staring at improbably thin women sporting pairs of rock-solid, sternum-valley-separated bolt-ons.   If we assume that bigger (i.e. fake, in this context) are sexier, then we have to define what it means to be sexy.  Is conformity sexy?   Is consumerism sexy?  Though it’s not often I agree with them, even the mainstream women’s magazines pay lip service to the notion that confidence equals sex appeal (while, of course, simultaneously destroying the confidence of their readers by their relentless advertising and self-improvement campaigns, all of which have as their basis the notion that anyone is good enough just as she is). 
 
All of which leads us to the quandary that is the relationship between cosmetic surgery and confidence. 
Many cosmetic surgeons market their services as a way to gain self-confidence, and many patients claim feelings of improved self-confidence as a result of their surgeries.  Of course, possession of the kind of self-confidence which involves unaltered self-acceptance is hard to come by in a culture predicated on tearing those feelings down for profit.  In the end, this kind of self-possessed confidence (in which we already possess everything we need to feel confident, no purchase necessary) would prevent us from electing for cosmetic procedures in the first place.  

In “Weasel Words,” William Lutz’s classic essay on the language of advertising, Lutz points out that some of the most misleading language exists in the form of unfinished comparisons.  Ads routinely claim things like “700% quieter,” “50% more,” or “30% faster,” but don’t say quieter, more or faster than what exactly, leaving us to fill in that blank for ourselves.  Often we automatically fill in that blank so that we read the claim as 50% more than the previous serving size or 700% quieter than the competitor when really the claim is actually based on something else ridiculous – like a car is 700% quieter on the inside than the outside, not 700% quieter than the competing model or the box may have 50% more space in it though not actually 50% more product. 

In the Cosmetic Surgery Center ad, the phrase “more beautiful breasts” is an unfinished comparison.  More beautiful than what?  For the female listener, the automatic answer is “more beautiful breasts than mine;” for the male listener, it’s “more beautiful breasts than my [girlfriend/wife/lover] already has,” i.e. no matter what the current breasts look like, they’re not beautiful enough.  But what is the claim really based on?  With surgery, will your breasts become more beautiful than Victoria Beckham’s?  More beautiful than Pamela Anderson’s?  More beautiful than a porn star’s?  And if the language of the ad equates beauty with size, then what happens to the claim?  Will your post-surgery breasts be “more beautiful” (i.e. bigger) than the breasts of your 12-year-old neighbor?  Probably so – but you can see, if we look at it this way, the ad’s not actually promising anything at all.

Seduction suggests a certain powerlessness on the part of the person seduced, a succumbing to an overpowering force.  It can be a relief to be seduced, a momentary relief to abjure responsibility for fulfilling our own desires.  In the end, the ad suggests that what’s sexier and more beautiful than we already are is succumbing to the very insecurities it has sown.  It urges you to think of the operating table as a bed, diet and exercise as keys which never quite fit the lock on the bedroom door.  Yessss, says the woman in the ad, we’ll tell you what’s beautiful without telling you anything at all; we’ll open the door, lie you down on the bed, and have our way with you.  Don’t struggle against the door, she says; succumb.  What she doesn’t say is that every day our culture changes the locks.

Liposuction, Famine Victims and You

It's an arch comment, sure. Pradeep Mehta of the CUTS Centre for International Trade, Economy and the Environment, made it when suggesting that money spent in the U.S. on liposuction to remove the fatty deposits of excess consumption should instead go to aid the victims of famine.

Mehta was hitting back at U.S. claims that India's economic growth, like that of China, is to fault for the effects of resource depletion being felt around the world. That blame followed the news last week that big box stores had started rationing rice. Mehta also pointed our that if Americans ate at the rate of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”

Of course, many might argue instead that if the American middle class ate less, then it would instead convert the spare biomass into ethanol for its SUVs. But that's not the point. Instead, we do need to take a look at our willingness to blame others for our modern maladies, both real and perceived. Is our over-consumption the fault of the ads that surround us? Of the corporations that place them? Of the plastic surgeons who seek to benefit by sucking out the excess?

Just as America needs to look at its own problems before blaming India and China, individuals need to bring order to their own before blaming society. Each of us needs to resist the notion that we can only be more by owning more, that wrinkles equal sickness, that size zero should be our monolithic ideal.

So take a good long look at yourself. And love what you see. Then start thinking about what we can do collectively.

Who's Touching Your Kids?

"I can't see any reason why a child … would need to expose their intimate body parts to strange adults for the sake of fashion or a trend," said New South Wales Minister for Community Services, Kevin Greene, following that Australian state’s recent ban on the piercing of children’s nipples and genitals.
His view seems fair enough, yet is one will all too little resonance among US states. Take Iowa, for example, where two attempts at similar regulation failed. Republicans there balked at the idea of raising license fees for body-piercing establishments, needed to ensure there was financing for enforcement.
Reports from Philadelphia, meanwhile, show that girls as young as eight are having bikini waxes for non-existent public hair in the back rooms of state-licensed salons. What training and guidance does the State Cosmetology Board provide there, on the subject of children? None. Ad Feminem did the research. The Governor’s office is unconcerned. Neither is the Department of Public Welfare, charged with implementing Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services law.
The same story is told by the FDA, which has technically banned the marketing of breast implants to teens, yet sits idly by as thousands more girls each year go under the knife for bigger breasts.
Is it really too much to ask that eight year olds not be subjected to bikini waxes? The simple shock jock response is of course to evoke the exercising of parental responsibility. But such a response is merely emblematic of a superficial approach to society consistent with making appearance matter too much in the first place. In fulfilling its role as the arbiter of a fair society has a responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
The campaign being fought against self confidence by the beauty industry and its collaborators is so ferocious that merely attaining the age of 18 provides little defense. But it’s a line we’d like to see drawn all the same.

Nevada to Nix Botox Cowboys?

Add Nevada to the list of states currently considering regulations for plastic surgery. A new legislative health subcommittee is looking into just who does what (against reports of cosmetic surgery spa receptionists wielding the ubiquitous hypodermics of poison and filler).

Physicians, Fix Your Ads

"Is your younger teenage daughter struggling with low self-esteem because her breasts aren’t developing fast enough?", asks Mountain View's Dr. Rosenberg in a self-penned advertorial pushing breast augmentations for girls He gives advice, much of it self-serving naturally, like the importance of a plastic surgeon being board certified. But beyond simply promoting the idea of breast augs for girls, he does fail to mention one thing. The FDA does not indicate the use of implants for kids, unless to correct congenital defects.

Cosmetic surgery practices regularly go "off-label" when it comes to FDA indications. Botox is regularly used beyond the "frown area" it is indicated for. Cocktails of drugs are injected in unapproved ways for fat loss "mesotherapy" or its tradenamed derivative LipoDissolve. Few practitioners publicize this. None mention it in their print advertising. And cosmetic surgery propaganda is clearly just that. Take this clinic's reassurance regarding the mesotherapy cocktail:

While all cocktail ingredients are individually FDA approved, the use of a combination of them is a so-called "off-label" procedure. Each practitioner is using slightly different mixtures. Our solution medications are purchased from highly reputable pharmacies. Off-label use of medication is common.

Would you have guessed from this information that mesotherapy has already been banned and Kansas, is likely to be banned in Nebraska and has already been regulated in Brasil?

 

If print advertising for pharmaceutical products must include all information we've become used to on indicated use and side effects, shouldn't regulations also apply to print advertising for procedures relying on Botox, Restylane and breast implants?

Dr. Laura Gets Smacked Around

“When you talk about mothers and swinging them against walls,” said the agitated, gold-bedecked woman at the microphone, “how productive is that?”  Her question for Dr. Laura Schlessinger, ""radio's number one relationship and family values talk show host," came at the end of Saturday’s crowded panel session at the LA Times Festival of Books.  She’d interrupted advice columnist and panel host Amy Alkon’s closing remarks to ask it. “And speaking of plastic surgery,” the woman wanted to know, hadn’t Dr. Laura had any herself?  “Some Americans,” responded Alkon, “have no sense of humor.” 

How had Schlessinger incited this woman’s ire?  By responding to my request for a comment on the growing popularity of cosmetic surgery for teenagers.  “I’d like to take their mothers by the ankles and smack them against the wall,” she’d said. Recently, various news outlets have reported on the trend of sweet 16 surgeries and graduation breast gifts, a bit of information which was met by a resounding gasp from the mostly-female crowd in UCLA’s Ackerman Ballroom. Apparently, this particular crowd had missed the reports.  Schlessinger had gone on to answer my question by asserting that these mothers (who allowed the cosmetic surgery for teens) were promoting a “Stepford mentality.”  The message they sent their daughters, she’d said, was “that ‘synthetic you’ is better.”

She may have been right about the message, but Schlessinger’s focus on mothers was reductive and curiously disingenuous, given her seat here in the epicenter of image manufacture.  Then again, the protesting woman’s response to Schlessinger was reactionary and ad hominem.   Somewhere in the middle, though, lies an approach which girls sorely need us to take.

Sure, some mothers – like the ones described in Carrie Denny's recent Philadelphia Magazine article as insisting on bikini waxes for their pre-pubescent girls – do deserve Dr. Laura’s lashing.  But they’re the minority.  From Bratz dolls to tabloids to Extreme Makeover to Maxim to Tom Leykis, girls are deluged with that Stepford mentality.  Mothers attempting to counter those ideas must do so in the face of a daily storm of synthetic messages pelting their daughters like hail. 

Despite FDA guidelines against the procedure for girls under the age of 18, plastic surgeons performed 8,000 breast augmentations on underage girls in 2007.  This is a 400% increase from the number of cases performed in 2001, when the FDA published its guidelines. Clearly, doctors and patients alike are taking advantage of the regulatory loophole approving the procedure for reconstruction and congenital defects, including asymmetry.

Almost all women have some degree of asymmetry in their breasts.  How much asymmetry qualifies a pair of teen breasts as congenitally defective?  The FDA provides no specific criteria, which means the flaw is in the eye of the beholder.  It’s no stretch to see how easily normal asymmetry can get reclassified as defective.

Every day our culture sends the message to teens that they’re not good enough.  Not only do we present them with an unattainable ideal, we promote the reclassification of normal idiosyncrasies as defects. While it’s not surprising that Dr. Laura didn’t offer a more measured response, it’s no more productive to point fingers at her for her own decisions regarding cosmetic procedures than it is for her to lay blame solely on mothers for their daughters’ requests, especially when those requests are made in the context of Los Angeles.  Rather than simply condemning mothers, Schlessinger could have called for an examination of the messages with which their daughters are inundated every day.  With cosmetic surgery now routinely advertised on the radio - as if buying 36-inch breasts requires no more thought than buying 20-inch rims - these messages come through the media machine into which Schlessinger has inserted herself as a profitable cog.

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That Bathing Suit We Shouldn't Have to Die to Buy

In light of all the recent stories of women like Stephanie Kuleba, Donda West and Olivia Goldsmith losing their lives during or as the result of cosmetic procedures, I thought I'd post the following.  It's since been removed from the website, but was originally posted on the website for the Genetic Institute for Anti-Aging (an "aesthetic medicine" and cosmetic surgery clinic) when their URL was still just www.stopmyaging.com.  The GIAA no longer uses that address other than to redirect to their new URL www.getyournewlook.com, which is appropriate, if you think about the fact that in the most morbid of ways, death on the operating table is one sure way to stop aging. 

Q: Dr. Jazayeri, If I am overweight, how can I improve my figure?
A: The great news is that a great figure is very attainable with plastic surgery. We have all tried to exercise, go on never ending diets and we still can't get into that bathing suit that we are dying to buy. Procedures such as liposuction, tummy tuck, breast augmentation and breast reduction can all help you to attain that great figure. (Emphasis mine.)

Despite Jazayeri's flippant figure of speech, women truly are dying to fit into the right bathing suit.  Perhaps they're pushed along by comments like the kind made by "renowned plastic surgeon to the stars" Dr. Robert Rey while hawking his Shapewear line as an "Affordable, Painless Alternative to Plastic Surgery" on HSN.  Rey, whose obvious pride in his wife's 90-lb physique is tempered by his claim that even she looks better wearing one of his waist-cinching products, claims that every woman has an unattractive "poof" around the middle - even the 6'-tall, 120 lb supermodels he knows. 

That's right.  According to Dr. Rey, there's not a single woman alive who naturally has the "right" figure.  Not even supermodels and 90-lb anorexics are thin enough. Or shapely enough.  It's a losing battle, ladies - unless of course, you buy some Shapewear, or you lie down on the operating table.  And if you never get off that table again, or you starve yourself to death in the process - hey, look on the bright side - at least you won't be fat anymore. 

How many women have to die before we stop privileging an unnatural physique?

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Singapore Slings New Lipo Regulations

Earlier today, Singapore announced a long-awaited tightening of regulations on liposuction: according to draft regulations, patients will have to sit out an 15 day cooling-off period before the procedure can be carried out, and doctors will be required to meet minimum standards for specific training.

Regarding the 15 days, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said: "We think this period is useful, otherwise, some operators might hard sell and force the customer to go and lie down and do it immediately.”

In order to be certified to carry out the procedure, doctors would be required to undergo at least a year of general surgical training and also receive specific instruction on liposuction. While this falls well short of the board-certification requirements for plastic surgeons, it would at least improve the training levels of general practitioners posing as cosmetic surgeons.

The draft regulations have met with much debate. A notable voice in favor has proven to be that of liposuction's inventor, Professor Yves Illouz, who points out that allowing untrained doctors to carry out the procedure was a "disaster" in his native France, resulting in 65 deaths.

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How Old is Beautiful?

Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche has slammed the Hollywood-driven definition of beauty, deriding it as being a simple combination of "youth and big breasts. "In France," continues the Binoche, 44, "beauty is much more subtle - and there is a greater acceptance of age." She also criticizes the growth of cosmetic surgery (ab)use among American actresses of uncertain age: "Botox makes people look older. You look at women who have had it, you see the fear of ageing on their face."

Binoche's view is one that resonates not just with Europeans, but also with those taking a deeper look at the impact of Hollywood's beauty culture and its offshoots, those unreal Orange County-centric reality shows.

Maggie Little, a bioethicist at Georgetown University sums up the prevalent US definition of beauty well: “The notion of what we’re supposed to look like comes from celebrities and it’s really distorted,” she says. “As a culture, we’ve developed this very narrowed view of beauty — only one decade, the 20s.”

FHM Magazine published its list of the world's 100 sexiest women today. The average age of the top ten choices, all Hollywood actresses (could there possibly be a sexier profession?), is  26.

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