Limitations and benefits of the #BoPo movement

Most of the research we read in this class regarding the ethics of plastic surgery and body image was done more than 10 years ago, if not further in the past. I would say a major development in this area has occurred within my lifetime which may exacerbate the problems outlined by that research–the skyrocketing popularity of social media.

In the time of Frances Macgregor’s article “Social and Cultural Components of the Motivations of Persons Seeking Plastic Surgery of the Nose,” people got plastic surgery as a result of ethnic bias in their interpersonal and professional relationships as well as non-racialized negative characteristics associated with this trait. On one hand, in the past 70 years we as a country have made some progress to break down prejudice and hate against Jewish and Italian people, which hopefully would have lessened the explicit discrimination these people would have faced due to their appearance. On the other hand, the second category of people (“fixers”) may have had their treatment worsened due to social media.

Social Media essentially takes a persons appearance and gives it a quantitative rating based on the number of likes and comments their posts receive. Women in college who use Instagram compare their bodies to an ideal, and compare themselves with other women who get more validation through social media. To make the problem even worse, many social media posts are heavily edited to make something completely unattainable look normal.

Influencer’s post showing how video can be manipulated too from Instagramreality

As people become more and more fixated on attaining an ideal that is essentially impossible, resorting to plastic surgery seems like a natural consequence of these social pressures. However along side the destructive influence of some social media comes another community, the Body Positive Movement. This movement, which also primarily takes place on social media, resists Photoshop, extreme posing and lighting and instead tries to show their authentic bodies so that other people know that they are in fact normal.

Preliminary studies have shown that young women who primarily see body positive posts as opposed to “thin-ideal” and “appearance neutral” generally have better body image, although more research is needed.

In addition to social media communities which advocate for body positivity, some corporations which sell clothing have started to use more body positive models.

These advertisements come with their own slew of problems however. To me, they seem to say “people who buy and use our product have good body image-see? you should buy it too, and then you might feel better about yourself.” Instead of focusing on change from within, by rewriting thinking habits or through actual therapeutic work, they seem to suggest that body positivity can be comodified and bought.

Macgregor mentions in his article, as does Ann Suzedelis in her article concerning plastic surgery done on children with down syndrome, that the burden to change should not be put on those who do not fit the conventional standards of attractiveness, but on our society as a whole to stop placing value on attractiveness as a trait. In some ways, the Body Positive movement fails to do this. It focuses on changing those who have been hurt by conventional standards of beauty, not those who benefit and therefore reinforce it. But in some respects this focus seems good. The people who have damaged self-esteem should not have to wait for entire cultural shifts in order to feel good about themselves and carry on with their lives.

I will leave off this discussion with one of my favorite modern punk songs, an anthem of self love from the newest album of the punk band IDLES, Joy as an Act of Resistance. This song counters the narrative above, and promotes an active form of self love through the lyrics:

I go outside, and I feel free

‘Cause I smash mirrors, and f*** T.V.