"It's the '90s," says fading actress Elise, played by the eerily ageless Goldie Hawn in First Wives Club. "Plastic surgery is like good grooming." Plastic surgery is favorable in today's media because of people's needs to look younger and more beautiful. Goldie Hawn's character's quote sums up what it is to live in society today. There's always the aging female celebrity having bigger boobs one day or the politician whose wrinkles suddenly disappeared by his next campaign speech. Every day it's something new, literally. The hype of plastic surgery is fueled by the media and those who are convinced they need to look better. The media pushes celebrities and regular people to look their best at any cost. Why is plastic surgery the new in-thing to do nowadays, and when the cost is at a high price? People shouldn't have to give up their life savings and just their life potentially changed because they feel they have big thighs or too many wrinkles.
For celebrities, the cost of plastic surgery is minimal for them; almost every celebrity has gone under the knife to change their look. Either it was for a nose or boob job, or just liposuction, the list is endless. Plastic surgery may seem all the rage now, but in reality it has been around for some time now. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons website, it wasn't until the 19th and 20th centuries that plastic surgery advanced scientifically and arrived both in Europe and the United States. Paul Schnur, MD, stated that "America's first plastic surgeon of note was Dr. John Peter Mettauer, who was born in Virginia in 1787. Dr. Mettauer performed the first cleft palate operation in the New World in 1827 with instruments he designed himself" (The History of Plastic Surgery, ASPS and PSEF). What this tells of the history of plastic surgery is that plastic surgery was originally meant to help out the person who had an obvious and hurtful imperfection.
