Plastic Surgery Beauty Pageant

Plastic surgery is becoming as common as any other beauty routine, and it is far from a exclusively American trend, as I found out after a business school-sponsored trip to South Korea junior year. One of the first things they told us at orientation in Korea was 1. the country's lack of garbage cans despite the litter-free streets (clean and less wasteful culture?) and 2. EVERYONE's had plastic surgery done, with fourteen-year-olds getting their eyelids done. Well, everyone being 30 percent of all women. Which is as common as braces in the States.



So even though plastic surgery has been down in these economic times with surgeries in the states having fallen 15 percent from 2007 to 2008 (the same thing is happening in S. Korea too) while we Americans are still spending a ton on it (like $10 billion. See below), I guess with the ubiquitous nature of the trend it would be inevitable that one day we would have surgically-enhanced beauty pageants. Which is what happened Friday in Budapest, Hungary.

In the world's first plastic surgery beauty contest called Miss Plastic Hungary (winner Réka Urbán at left, who's a hostess and had only her breasts done just this year, won a new apartment...her surgeon won a prize also), the only requirements were to be female, at least 18 and to have undergone at least one cosmetic surgery. And organizer István Venyige asked that the surgeries not be too "extreme."

Of course the judging might not have been too level since contestants weren't grouped by what they had enhanced, but it's the world's first pageant of its kind so there's room for improvement. Or Venyige (not much information available on him unfortunately. I'd be very curious to know what his stake is in the biz) just wanted the publicity and didn't care.

But officially, why the pageant? Venyige says on his website that cosmetic surgeries in Hungary are not widely accepted. While there's not much reliable information on surgeries broken down by country, a Medical Treatment Abroad Survey said Hungary, along with India and Turkey, were the most popular cosmetic surgery destinations for UK patients.

But Venyige could also be comparing Hungary to the US, where we make everyone else look like puritans. According to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), in 2006 there were 5,655 or 50 percent more breast augmentations (most popular in Europe and the States) compared to the prior year. Britons also apparently spent almost $1 billion (£497) total on surgeries in 2006.

Now compare that to the US, where in the same period we spent an estimated $10 billion on surgeries! But that's pretty easy to believe when as early as in 1997 we had 101,178 breast augmentations and last year we were up to 355,671. It might just be like the alarm clock thing where Americans are a lot more open to (sometimes shameless) self-improvement.

Anyway angry protesters aside, this is a small but interesting development toward acceptance that we have come a mind-blowingly far way from our caveman times. It sounds like science fiction when we're creating smarter, more (artificially) beautiful versions of ourselves. What about IQ tests on Adderall? Art contests on LSD?

Drug competitions might sound dangerous but it's comparable to plastic surgery. We're not just altering our minds but also bodies. And people seem to forget that plastic surgery is, well, surgery. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) say the plastic surgery fatality rate is 0.25%, comparable to the overall surgery fatality rate, and this is from the pro-plastic surgery folk. Then the FDA says that liposuction deaths could be higher than deaths from car crashes.

Whatever the rate I'm sure we can all agree it is a pretty unfortunate way to die when some out have no choice but to undergo surgery. So I hope people remember that before they opt for it that plastic's a pretty terrible way to die.