Letters to the Editor
-
Can you say "overreaction"?
When I was a child and my mother had dental surgery, I was shocked to come home and find her in bed in the middle of the day. She explained she'd been to the dentist, she hurt, and she needed me to play quietly. Fine. When I was a teen, she told me that if I wanted a nose job, it would be fine. When a classmate had breast-reduction surgery, she explained that the girl had been in pain and people had laughed at her.
These things can be dealt with rationally without traumatizing a young person or without making him or her feel as if s/he is a commodity.
What distresses me is the sort of censoriousness I detect here. Which surgeries would you sanction? Is a nosejob okay if you have a deviated septum? I gather that breast augmentation is Bad. What about breast reconstruction? If a tummy tuck is Wrong, how about a C-section.
There is a difference between getting some facial work done and coming out looking like Jocelyne Wildenstein.
No, I haven't had any plastic surgery, cellulite removal, or even Botox. But if I did, it would be the concern only of myself, my insurance provider (which doesn't handle cosmetic procedures) and as much gentleness as I could muster to explain it to a child.
We can't all write poetry like Cyrano de Bergerac, you know. Or hold our heads and our white plumes up quite that self-destructively high.