The right to be Beautiful

Plastic surgery (for cosmetic rather than reconstructive purposes) has never really been my favorite issue to discuss in relation to feminism.  When it has come up, I have only ever examined it from an individual perspective:  What is that person’s motivation?  Is he/she doing this because of society’s expectations?  But in “The Opinion Pages” of The New York Times, Alexander Edmonds brings forward a new chilling perspective. “A ‘Necessary Vanity’” discusses the ideas of Brazilian plastic surgeon Dr. Ivo Pitanguy, who believes that beauty is as basic a right as health care or education.

I’ve been struggling to understand this notion of beauty as a right since I read the article.  To me, it seems that calling beauty a basic right establishes modern socialized norms about what is attractive or not as concrete truths rather than media-induced opinions.  It seems to be one more way of distancing different cultures from one another.  (In Kenya, many people found it beautiful to be old.  Here, people are fond of Botox to look youthful.)  It also seems to focus more intently on women than on men, lending itself to the perpetuation of sexist ideas and objectification.  For instance, Edmonds writes that “In poor urban areas beauty often has a similar importance for girls as soccer (or basketball) does for boys: it promises an almost magical attainment of recognition, wealth or power.”  (Yuck.) Furthermore, Edmonds acknowledges that the majority of plastic surgery patients around the world are women.

Yet the ideas of Dr. Pitanguy are not so easy to dismiss.  For instance, it is true that in our society beauty can be an advantage.  We see this again and again, from A Chorus Line’s “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” to University of Texas-Austin economists’ study claiming that beautiful people are happier (and that beauty is particularly important for women) because beauty has a strong correlation with wealth.  And Dr. Pitanguy doesn’t seem to just be looking for a moral justification to his lucrative practice.  He has offered free non-essential plastic surgery to the poor, and he emphasizes the importance of reducing some aspects of wealth inequality by increasing people’s access to cosmetic surgeries.

So what does this mean?  Is lack of access to expensive plastic surgery just one more way that people who are poor are disadvantaged?  Can we be unfair in our vanities?  I am revolted by the notion of increasing access to cosmetic surgeries with the idea that it is important to look a certain way; rather, I think that a “beauty disadvantage” is just one more reason to fight against socialized norms about what beauty is.  But how long will that take?  Can we ever really be free from this kind of vanity?  And while we wait to find out, are we going to continue to ignore the inequalities Dr. Pitanguy has noticed?