Plastic surgery is the new normal for any age group and especially for younger generations like the Millennials, who see plastic surgery as a form of self-care.
Ours is a generation that goes first to exercise and eat well, and then to plastic surgery to fix things they can’t fix by themselves.
Cosmetic treatment is most commonly performed by women and fillers lip enhancements are among the five most requested procedures, followed by abdominoplasty/tummy tuck, rhinoplasty (nose surgery) and blepharoplasty/eyelid surgery.
Increased Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence
Plastic surgery has grown at a staggering rate as it became more accessible and society’s expectations of beauty expanded. For instance, there was a boom in breast and buttock implants and rhinoplasties in the pandemic; technology and social media also influence popular aesthetics across the world.
We all want to look and feel the best, which improves self-esteem and self-confidence. It is shown that when people are happy with how they look, they are more successful in their career and in their relationships.
Similarly, plastic surgery can help maintain physical wellness — liposuction and tummy tuck, for example, can help lose weight and promote healthier diets, while rhinoplasty corrects breathing problems and prevents disease. Furthermore, cosmetic surgery has also been shown to effectively help with psychological traumas from childhood bullying – victims who had suffered bullying themselves want cosmetic surgery as a form of self-respect.
Social Media Influence
Instagram and Snapchat, two of the most eye-catching social media platforms, made it easy for people to seek cosmetic surgery to make themselves look better on the internet. This trend was recently demonstrated by a study of 252 people: the longer you spend on Instagram or Snapchat, the more you were willing to have cosmetic procedures.
New proliferation of nonsurgical procedures is also fuelled by the impulse to improve our online presence, with CoolSculpting, laser skin resurfacing and injectables delivering great anti-ageing results for patients without having to have the full body reconstructions like facelifts and liposuction.
Millennials have been particularly quick to get on board with this, with plastic surgery usually being part of a routine self-care schedule along with exercise and nutrition. They’ve contributed to changing the cultural game by mainstreaming cosmetic surgery as a part of good health and body image.
Increased Self-Discipline
In the past couple of years, social media influencers have fostered an obsession with the “perfect hourglass” figure. This has made a number of people not feel great about their bodies and choose to get cosmetic surgery in Burbank, CA, but one should know that this can easily become an addiction to plastic surgery.
It is clear from studies that psychological investment in physical appearance, absorbed media-based notions of beauty, and social setting are all predictive of cosmetic surgery (Sarwer et al. 2005) and craving for plastic surgery (Sarwer et al. 2005), but a great deal of it is still correlational in nature, instead of causal.
And patients must be careful to only get cosmetic surgery for the right reasons, and not as a mental health intervention. And surgery won’t mean much if someone feels unkempt by bullying or taunting – or even if surgery boosts self-esteem to an awful extent.
Increased Self-Awareness
Some people seek cosmetic surgery for imperfections that make them unhappy or distress, including over-inflated breasts (gynecomastia). However, in those with severe acne scars laser treatments could help in making it less visible and reduce its opacity.
Cosmetic surgery is not just a cosmetic benefit – quality of life can be improved in a variety of ways as well. If you’re experiencing some belly skin, a tummy tuck or liposuction can help you lose the weight and have more mobility in your life.
One study revealed that many factors influence whether or not a person is willing to undergo plastic surgery, including religion, age, gender, friends/family vicarious experience and low self-esteem. Most interested participants in cosmetic surgery are older, female, educated, married people, and suffer from chronic diseases such as back problems.
