Plastic surgery in Brazil: Where ugliness is a disease

Medical advancements in most cases are something that ought to be celebrated. However, in the case of cosmetic surgery this has been highly debated. Of course, this field emerged for the purpose of restoring the faces of burn victims with congenital deformities, but recently its focus has shifted onto a mainly aesthetic purpose. This raises debate on many levels: Are doctors wasting their time and energy on patients that don’t really need it? Are they in doing so betraying their ethical obligation to cure the ill? Do they betray the Hippocratic oath, by performing risky operation on otherwise healthy patients? Are they deliberately feeding into unhealthy beauty ideals, and helping to create unrealistic (westernised) beauty standards? 

In Brazil where according to the “International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery” 13% of all procedures are performed and girls as young as 15 are having their first procedures, plastic surgery is often described as a psychological necessity. Doctors explain that being different and not being able to live up to certain societal expectations causes severe damage to the self-esteem of these women justify these procedures.

In a way [cosmetic surgeons] are like a psychologist with a knife in your hand.

Evo Pitangui, Plastic surgeon in Rio de Janeiro (min 10:15-10:21 in video)

While here in the UK the government provides free plastic surgery for certain specific situations where it is estimated necessary and detrimental to the quality of life, Brazilian health care makes any kind of plastic surgery extraordinarily accessible to people of all economic backgrounds stating that “everyone has a right to beauty”.  Of course this mindset has many cultural backgrounds, Brazilian women have a long history of being seen sexualised and objectified, internally and by western media (i.e. 2000’s Music videos like “I got it from my Mama”or “Beautiful”).

Further, the discourse by which cosmetic surgery is conveyed to the greater public is on one hand deeply medicalised, and on the other severely banalized. Creating a certain narrative of “ugliness as disease”, and one that can easily be fixed since health care covers the costs. You could think this is absurd, or that it is wonderful to open such possibilities to everyone. But how does this technology affect the very problem it claims to be curing? Perhaps the insecurities, self-esteem issues and psychological problems wouldn’t be as prevalent if one wasn’t surrounded by so many cosmetically enhanced people?
Plastic surgery without a doubt changes our relationship to beauty, and it will be interesting to see how this will play out in the future.