INTERNATIONAL PLASTIC SURGERY
You can’t blame it on Barbie: The Color of Plastic Surgery

by ROXY VARZA, staff writer

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that roughly 85 percent of all cosmetic surgery clients are female. Despite the significant Caucasian lead, women of other ethnicities are beginning to follow in the growing trends: a younger face, thinner body and fuller breasts. But does everyone really want to look the same?

Initially, plastic surgery was used to help Jews combat the anti-Semitism brought about by the Nazis. Nose jobs were the most common procedure used to make a Jewish face seem Aryan. This desire to “become white” gave leeway to today’s somewhat perceived western standard of beauty.

Fortunately, the western standard of beauty isn’t exactly the global ideal. As Vogue began featuring ethnic cover models in the early 70s, multicultural and multiethnic standards of beauty began to take form. Women of other ethnicities and nationalities not only possess different preferences in facial features and body types, but certain cultural and religious practices collide with the Barbie doll standard.
The western standard seems to point, if not at Barbie, in the direction of Pamela Anderson. Oddly enough, the waif-thin, giant-breasted, young-faced blonde is an embodiment of America’s most popular trends in plastic surgery: weight reduction, breast augmentation, and anti-aging procedures.

If Caucasians seem obsessive about looking younger, perhaps it’s because light skin tends to age faster than Asian or African-American skin. There should be no mystery as to why Botox injections are the most popular of any cosmetic procedure in the US. Other age defying procedures include face and forehead lifts, eyelid tightening, and skin resurfacing, to name a few. Additional rejuvenators, like Collagen, are also used to postpone aging by creating youthful features, like fuller lips.

After obsessively trying to combat age, American Caucasians focus their attention on breast implants and weight reduction, which are equally popular in the US. Breast augmentation, despite FDA concerns with the safety of silicone implants, continues to grow in popularity. In the states, possibly with the fast-food industry to blame, liposuction and tummy tucks are extremely common among all ethnic groups, except Asians.

For Asians, double eyelid surgery is the most common procedure. Contrary to popular belief, double eyelids do occur naturally for a portion of the Asian population. They are frequently regarded as more attractive possibly because of their scarcity. The proliferation of double eyelid surgery is the result of this rarity among the Asian population combined with western glamour trends. Asian women also focus a good deal of attention on breast augmentation and nose jobs.
Nose jobs are common among all different ethnic groups. However, the procedure varies dramatically from group to group. Asians generally prefer to elevate the bridge of their noses, giving the nose more vertical definition. African-Americans, less frequently than Asians, get similar bridge-raising nose jobs. However, African-Americans typically try to minimize the tips of their noses and the shape of their nostrils. Another group that commonly downsizes and minimizes the size and shape of their noses is Middle Easterners.
Cultural and religious practices in the Middle East aid the popularity of nose jobs. In many Middle Eastern countries women are required to wear the hejab, making their faces the only publicly seen parts of their bodies. Surgeries such as breast augmentation and liposuction are extremely rare in the Middle East for this very reason. With so much emphasis on the face, nose jobs are by far the most common procedure.

On the contrary, Latin culture tends to celebrate a fuller figure, drawing more attention to the body rather than the face. Latinas generally aim for a more voluptuous figure, in comparison to America’s anorexic ideals, with especially curvy hips. While weight reduction procedures do extremely well among the Latina population, breast augmentations are also very common. Many Latina women who opt for breast augmentation prefer to have larger buttocks than breasts, contrary to Caucasian and European preferences.

Thankfully, these different preferences demonstrate that different ethnic groups aren’t using plastic surgery to erase their ethnicities. Unfortunately, the presence of plastic surgery makes the possibility available. Globally, body ideals tend to vary more frequently than facial ideals. This is largely because of the different cultural and religious attitudes regarding the body.

If it seems as though the west has set the facial standard, this is not necessarily the case. Humans of all cultures and ethnicities tend to find symmetry and youthfulness attractive. This includes large eyes, young skin, small noses, and full lips. Therefore, double eyelid surgeries and nose jobs may be the result of a global ideal rather than a western standard. But it’s probably more fun to blame it on Barbie.