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Plastic Surgery - Faking Reality?

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I'm just curious. Sure - you can improve your physique in the gym, but when it comes to your facial features - you are pretty much limited to whatever genes were dealt to you. No amount of workouts in the gym will give you a square jaw, and oftentimes, you won't be even able to lose fat from your cheeks to give you that chiseled look (even after you get below 8% body fat and sport a perfect six-pack). Things like this can only be accomplished through facial cosmetic surgery.

I'm in the middle of reading Atlas Shrugged, and it is very clear that Ayn Rand, is presenting all positive characters as close to ideal as possible, when body is concerned. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that fiction in Objectivism often depicts the world as it should be. I'm sure Rearden would have no problem making it as a German poster boy, with his square jaw, and blue eyes.

Is one morally justified to try to attain that 'ideal' look through the use of cosmetic surgery?

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I think one could be morally justified depending on the context. Here are two examples for discussion:

"I want to get a face lift. My friends all say I should, and I want people to like me better because I'm prettier. The Johnson's are having a big party this Christmas and I want to impress everyone."

"I want to get a face lift. I love my job as an actor, but I've noticed that my opportunities are dwindling as I get older. I've spoken with my agent, and his judgment, with which I agree, is that I could get more of the roles I love if I made my face look younger. I can afford it, and it would give me more of the work I love to do."

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How about, "I hear that many of the effects of aging are results of cellular damage, therefore I see no reason why I shouldn't try to repair that damage! I don't simply want to quietly accept my old age as "fate;" I want to take every effort to be young and healthy (and that includes regular exercise and strength training)!"

Or maybe "I don't think I should accept as fate a bad nose I was born with any more than I would accept as fate a crooked leg (another birth defect which could be repaired with surgery)."

There are TONS of other good reasons, I am sure.

Edited by Inspector
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There are TONS of other good reasons, I am sure.

There are loads of brilliant reasons to have surgery. You should be able to do what you want to your body. As Cher said, if she wants to sew her tits on her back, that's her business.

However, the problem is that too many people will use surgery as solution when it is not. If someone is unhappy, rather than identify the cause of this, they will think that it is because their bottom is as cute and tight as their friend Cindy's, so they'll have a tuck. Surely, this cannot be justified from an Objectivist view point because it is a denial of reality.

Personally, from a practical point of view (I am saying this as someone who is quite happy with his appearance), I would not have surgery because I cannot see how you would stop - a little bit here would surely lead to a little bit there and then a bit back there and some more over here.

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Dan,

Anything can be viceful in engaged in to excess or for the wrong reasons; plastic surgery is no exception. I don't think, however, that the possibility of misusing it places it outside of the category of "things which are GOOD." It's not like it's heroin or crack cocaine or something. Speaking generally, it's something wonderful that is of great benefit to many many people.

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The purpose of morality isn't to figure out whether or not something is "justified", either, but whether it is good.

I'm not thrilled with my face, but I know enough about the dangers involved in the surgery that I don't consider it worthwhile if the desired improvement is a small one. Most of the people I know who've gotten, say, a nose job, look sort of . . . odd . . . and not necessarily any better than they did before.

Oh, and a boob job usually makes you look like a cow badly in need of a milking, in my opinion, but this may be because most of the women I've seen that got them went WAY off the deep end in the size department.

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Oh, and a boob job usually makes you look like a cow badly in need of a milking, in my opinion, but this may be because most of the women I've seen that got them went WAY off the deep end in the size department.

I agree that most boob jobs are over the top, but I have an aunt who got a small augmentation (just so she had something), and it looks just fine. You've probably seen women who've had tasteful augmentations done plenty of times and just not realized it.

That said, I've never felt a pair of fakeys myself, but I hear they're nowhere near as fun as the real thing. :thumbsup:

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How about this one, folks? A woman who was disfigured due to a dog mauling got a partial face transplant. An excerpt:

"The results of the daring nose, lips and chin transplant — the first ever attempted — were beyond what the doctors had hoped for. The new face bore an uncanny resemblance to her former face, one doctor said."

I love advances in science and medicine. Congratulations all, and I hope her body accepts the medications and the new face.

[Edit: Changed "dog bite" to "dog mauling" to reflect the extreme nature of the situation.]

Edited by Groovenstein
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Is one morally justified to try to attain that 'ideal' look through the use of cosmetic surgery?

I think we can simplify this problem by asking; why/when would cosmetic surgery be immoral?

And I think the answer as Felipe said would be when you give up a higher value in order to attain it. This shouldn't even be a question. If you have the means and the desire to change something in your life that you think would improve it and it isn't harming anyone else, why not?

I think the main problem would be with psychology of the patient: questions like this -- is it immoral, are what would cause the person to have problems.

So my question is: why would cosmetic surgery be questioned as a possible immoral act?

Edited by Felipe
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  • 1 year later...

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier topic - sN ***

 

Is it immorally deceptive?

My current opinion is that it's not. I mean it would take a completely different world view to accept imperfection as the moral ideal.

The premises might make it immoral though, especially if low self-esteem is the motivating factor.

I'm kind of stuck on this issue. What do you guys think?

It's important to me because I'm thinking about a career in plastic surgery. Right now, I go to a pre-med high school. In college, I plan on majoring in psychology and then going off to medschool.

Edited by softwareNerd
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Is it immorally deceptive?
In the same way that exercising and dieting to lose weight is immorally deceptive -- not. But your questions don't make it clear whether you're asking about yourself or your patients. It is certainly not immoral for you to become a plastic surgeon. Are you concerned with the threat of dealing with an immoral person in your line of work? If so, I don't know how you can possibly survive, because there is always a threat that some person you interact with will be immoral. What you should be concerned wit is your own morality. And as I say, there's no immorality in plastic surgery.
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In the same way that exercising and dieting to lose weight is immorally deceptive -- not. But your questions don't make it clear whether you're asking about yourself or your patients. It is certainly not immoral for you to become a plastic surgeon. Are you concerned with the threat of dealing with an immoral person in your line of work? If so, I don't know how you can possibly survive, because there is always a threat that some person you interact with will be immoral. What you should be concerned wit is your own morality. And as I say, there's no immorality in plastic surgery.

Sorry, I was questioning both. I wasn't concerned about dealing with an immoral person, simply assisting them.

There's nothing wrong with it. You're not faking reality, you're changing reality.

Nature isn't always perfect, so we try to improve it.

Great way of putting it. That's why I'm drawn to the field as well ; ) You just helped me find the words.

Edited by Julian
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Your clients can want your services for irrational reasons; but, then a car buyer may want a car for similary irrational reasons too.

I assume that the bulk of people who get plastic surgery, do so to look better, which is rational. People use cosmetics or buy certain clothes and jewelery for similar reasons.

In a small subset of clients, this primary motivation may be mixed with some irrational motivations as well, but I figure that's typically not your concern.

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I wasn't concerned about dealing with an immoral person, simply assisting them.
Still, what is the problem with assisting an immoral person? Is your central purpose in life to make sure that immoral people suffer as much as possible? I think you could correctly draw a line at doing face-altering surgery as a way of aiding a criminal to avoid detection, and certainly you would not get any criticism from me if you were to decline to reconstruct the fce of an arsonist whose firebomb blew up in his face. That's pretty marginal, though -- I doubt you'd ever actually face those choices.

I think you might say "Michael, if we cut any more of your nose off, your boogers will not have anywhere to live", but it's his problem and not yours. If he were to offer you $10 million to slice another quarter inch off of his beezer, even though it might be feeding into his mental illness, it would be immoral of you to decline the $10 million.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Individuals are treated differently depending on their appearance and how one is treated by the world greatly effects one's self-esteem, therefore plastic surgery has the potential to vastly improve someone's quality of life.

One thing that should be said against is that it is not a panacea a great many people hold completely unrealistic attitudes to beauty because they live in a culture where their visual senses are bombarded by extremely attractive people (who in real life without a professional stylist and an airbrusher seem much more plain) so they end up buying into a media induced myth that they are ugly when objectively it is not the case.

Each individual ultimately has to balance the cost of cosmetic surgery against the realistic benefits. I understand that some short men pay up to a hundred thousands dollars and endure months of excruciating pain to stretch their legs so that they can gain a few extra inches in height because they think it will revolutonise their work/love life which I find crazy.

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My sister had re-constructive surgery on her face after it got destroyed by a car accident. I doubt even the naturalists/intrinsicists/religionists that declare that plastic surgery is wrong because it does not preserve one's "natural" look would complain about that. After all, all it did was restore her natural look. She now looks almost exactly like she did before the accident. You'd never know her face was destroyed by looking at her.

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"Plastic surgery - faking reality?" - This question contains the same type of error as thinking that if you do not poop in public (or spit, cough etc'), it must mean you try to hide or deceive, and hide your "true nature" :)

Essentially the mistake comes from looking only at the action, without a deeper understanding of the motive for it, and then judging yourself based on the shallow appearance.

For example - you do not want to poop in front of people, no matter how badly you need to :P . You do not understand why you have this wish, but you identify that the act of hiding something (or not acting in a way that matches your needs) is the same (in appearance) as the act of pretending to be someone you're not for the sake of a "good impression". The similarity is in acting in a way that keeps something unrevealed.

However, despite the similarity in appearance, the two actions are fundamentally different;

The person who does not poop in public acts to maintain a relationship with humans which is devoid of disgusting things. It is rational to act in a way that keeps your shared subjects with someone - pleasant for the both of you. And as long as you have a positive outlook on people (or at least thinking that people deserve enough respect as to not be put your poop on their dinner table), it is a higher value to maintain a dignified relationship with them than to supply the immediate needs of your body. There is nothing fake about it.

The person who hides his own personality and puts on an act, instead, is indeed lying and attempting to fake reality. He is acting in a way that suggests that something exists, when it doesn't actually exist.

While the actions appear similar, they are very different. But when the reason for an action is not clear, and when a judgement is made based on shallow evidence, the conclusion can easily turn against the person (in the form of self-doubt, for example).

This form of thinking may be responsible for plenty of mistaken viewpoints. For example - Peter Keating caring about success and money was willing to step on corpses to get what he wanted. He did not actually care about anyone (because he had no self, but that's not the main point here). A person who is unable to value anyone is bad. A person who uses people through deception is bad. But what is detected above all here (by people) - is the appearance of the actions. The action of pursuing a personal goal, and the action of not caring for any human being. What they generalize, then, is not "selflessness is bad" but rather "acting for personal gain and not caring for anyone is bad". They look at the appearance of the action, not at the motive behind it.

I used to think that selfishness is an ugly trait, due to the same mistake of seeing someone who is incapable of valuing anyone, but what I generalized as the bad thing was not the inability to value, but the action of acting solely for personal gain, and never acting for anyone elses' well being.

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I used to think that selfishness is an ugly trait, due to the same mistake of seeing someone who is incapable of valuing anyone, but what I generalized as the bad thing was not the inability to value, but the action of acting solely for personal gain, and never acting for anyone else's well being.
By which, I assume you mean that it's an ugly trait for someone not to be able to find value in any other human being?

But, more on topic... I think you're saying that we all know that people poop, so they aren't trying to gain anything from us by deceit when they do not poop at our dinner table [Your analogy is eyebrow-raising; have you been hanging around 8 year old boys :) ?] However, you say that when someone hides their personality, and put on an act, then they are guilty of hiding the truth and -- let's assume -- trying to deceive someone into granting them some value, on the basis of that deception.

So far, so good. However, could you explain why plastic surgery is not in the "gain value via deceit" category? I'm not saying it is, of course; just curious how you'd explain that. I assume we can agree that plastic surgery is a value for the person undergoing it, as well as to those who get to interact with her. So, we know there's a value to be gained. How then would you explain the lack of deceit? Does it come from the permanence of such surgery? I assume you'll say it does not; after all, something temporary (e.g. lip-stick or shoulder-pads) aren't immoral either. So, what's the root of the difference, then?

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My two cents:

There is nothing immoral, per se, with plasitc surgery, but it can still say a lot about a person's character. If someone was in a disfiguring fire and wants to look normal again...fine. If a woman gets plastic surgery because her boobs are unusally small, her butt is unusually big, and she wants to look more proportional...fine.

Then there's my younger cousin...she was always an attractive girl, but decided to get a boob job anyway. I think my cousin is typical of women who get boob jobs, in that she is one of the most shallow, superficial people I have ever known. At one point, Paris Hilton was her role model (yeah, she acutally said that), if that tells you anything. On her facebook profile, she has "gossip and celebrities" listed as her interests. While there may not be anything immoral about it, I think that the overwhelming majority of people who use surgery to artificially improve their looks, are shallow, superficial, and generally rather unintelligent. As such, that will always be my first impression of someone, once I have learned that they had cosmetic plastic surgery

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