Gwendolyn Sobkowiak | staff writer

When I was little I thought that my Aunt Rebecca was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. The highest compliments of my childhood were being told I looked just like her.

The irony in this was that she really felt no such self confidence. As a child, whenever I shared this admiration of her, she was quick to give me the laundry list of flaws she saw in her own appearance. These comments were validated by the fact that they had been told to her over the course of her lifetime. These statements were true because they had come from an external source.

She listed various flaws, from her hooked and bumped nose, numerous moles, and crooked teeth as though these flagrantly dismantled my praise. She’d laughingly accuse me of trying to pad her ego. I was 7-years-old, and doing no such thing. I genuinely believed that she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.

The beauty we see in others feels so obvious because, after all, it’s often sitting right in front of us. It’s strange to hear the people we admire doubt their own attractiveness. So often compliments are dismissed on the grounds of something the person finds in their appearance to be flagrantly obvious and disconcerting. It’s not a new phenomenon to have low self esteem. What is new, however, is the range of tools that we now have access to which can allow for us to “fix” ourselves and the ever increasing cultural normalization of using them.

What was once considered a niche and even shameful has transformed into a booming industry. In the wake of World War II, reconstructive procedures radically improved the lives of veterans who had suffered from debilitating facial deformities following combat, according to the National Library of Medicine.

By the 1960s, as Hollywood glamorized ever narrowing beauty ideals, cosmetic surgery shifted from medical miracle to mass aspiration. The rates which began in the hundreds of thousands in 1969 have increased to the millions. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, since 2000 alone, the overall rate of cosmetic procedures has risen by 115%. Today, roughly 6.1 million cosmetic procedures are performed annually, in the U.S alone.

For a long time, I defended cosmetic surgery as a form of personal autonomy. In my mind it was no different than wearing makeup, dying one’s hair or getting acrylic nails. The first time I was recommended to get cosmetic surgery I was 16. It was from my orthodontist. I had endured four years of braces and was embarrassed to death about my teeth. He was insistent in his suggestion. It was a simple procedure which would require breaking my jaw to reshape my profile.

“We all want to look our best,” I remember he said. The suggestion was no more to him than recommending that I get a new haircut.

The suggestion stuck with me for years. Who was I to frown on an industry that I might one day want to use myself? But eventually the crucial difference really sank in. Plastic surgery isn’t something you can wash off at night. It’s permanent, and with permanence comes both personal and cultural consequences.

First, choosing cosmetic surgery requires believing that something about your appearance is deeply “wrong.” Not just imperfect, but so flawed that it needs surgical intervention. For most of us, it is almost unheard of to look in the mirror without passing some form of judgment. But this is different than thinking you’d like how you looked with a different lip gloss. Second, it requires believing that another version of your face or body is better, and that it’s worth giving up your natural features to achieve it. It’s not like you’re trying to be a blonde for a couple years. Hair grows out, a rhinoplasty doesn’t. Third, you’re often allowing someone else to make that judgment for you. There are doctors who specialize in this brand of perfection peddling, and they’d be more than happy to tell you what exactly is the matter with that unappealing face of yours.

The more discussions I had on the subject, the less comfortable I felt with my original level of tolerance. It isn’t that I want to shame people who make that choice. I understand the pressures associated with appearance, I’ve felt them myself. But I worry about how normal we’re making the concept that our bodies need fixing.

People rarely seek out surgery from a place of self-acceptance. More often, they’re responding to a culture that tells them they’re not good enough. By buying into this industry we’re limiting the scope of what beauty is. But I do know that there’s an industry that’s happy to find a flaw in even the most luminescent person I know. And I know that buying into that doesn’t sit right with me.

Beauty trends come and go in endless cycles. Maybe someday bump noses will be back in style, maybe not. I’ve decided to try to not pin my self-worth on the carousel of what’s in fashion. We are being brainwashed by companies desperate to sell us on the idea that everything about us is an imperfection. It’s sick and delusional to keep feeding into it by pretending like this is normal. What should matter is having self worth beyond our appearances. When that’s in place, compliments about beauty feel like a bonus, not a lifeline.

For me at least, having sworn off the suggestion that’s haunted me since high school, I make up for the painful burden of looking like myself by viewing it as my private form of rebellion. Every compliment I get feels authentically mine. This is the face I inherited from generations of people who looked all kinds of ways and loved each other anyway.

It’s tempting some days to imagine a “perfect” version of myself created in a sterile, white surgeon’s office. But when I think about my Aunt Rebecca, I realize I don’t want to erase the history of the family that I’m a part of. If the world eventually swings back to celebrating the features I once wished away, I want to be here, smiling with this face, grateful that I kept it.

Gwendolyn Sobkowiak can be reached at sobkowiakg@duq.edu