Natural vs. Enhanced Beauty
Posted on | October 25, 2009 | 1 Comment
What does it take to be a commercial model? Take a look at this short clip:
I like the above video for its time-lapse style of showing just how much processing – pre- and post- production – goes into an ad campaign before it gets released for market consumption. Notice the remarkable transformation of an otherwise average/ordinary teenager into a billboard model.
Beauty is no longer simply “in the eyes of the beholder”, but now more “through the lens of the photographer and the computer of a graphics artist”. While it has been theorized that a human’s appreciation of beauty has evolutionary basis (e.g., symmetrical faces tend to show less genetic defects, ergo better offspring), today’s taste has become arguably more subjectively framed through a socially (or economically?) conditioned perspective.
So much customization can be done nowadays for the sake of beauty. Much of what used to be held as genetic gifts nurtured over time to bring out the “best” features in a young lady can now be easily matched by medical science and lots of money.
Beauty as they say is skin-deep. Yes, a very good dermatologist (and we’re talking about the licensed professionals here) can take care of the body’s largest and most visible organ – the skin. But beauty does not stop there; it can even go down to the subcutaneous level (as in the case of plastic/reconstructive surgery) and even all the way to the bones (when it comes to certain maxillo-facial surgery procedures). Let’s not forget the implants that can go practically everywhere.
Curiously, most responsible and credible “beauty doctors” sometimes advise patients to seek psychiatric clearance first prior to a surgical procedure. The clearance is deemed necessary so that the patient would still be within the normal bounds of perception as regards her desire to have her body image changed, and not motivated by some neurosis.
I remember a professor in medical school telling us about this patient who wanted to alter a significant body feature (I think it was her height) so much that she was willing to undergo an Ilizarov-type of procedure (photo on the left).
An Ilizarov operation is one that has orthopedic surgeons intentionally and carefully causing a break in the long bones, followed by the installation of a metallic apparatus that allows for the limb to be stabilized. The gap between the now-two pieces of bone is then widened slowly over time, with the intention of stimulating bone and soft tissue growth at the area. This is done gradually until the desired length of the limb is achieved.
(That professor of ours ended the story by saying that he did not go ahead and do the procedure, for it was later on discovered during the psychiatric evaluation that she was acting on a neurotic desire.)
Art – or human art in this case – is now not just for art’s nor society’s sake, but for the market’s taste and the cash it can bring in. Next time the vanity bug bites, ask yourself – for whom or what are you really fixing yourself for?
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October 27th, 2009 @ 10:43 am
nice site albert