Prom Plastic Surgery and Girls SPARKing a Difference

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Posted May 3rd, 2012 in Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups, Why I Wrote CAMD | Leave a comment

When  we called people “plastic” back when I was a teenager, it was an insult. These days, apparently, not so much. Joe Kelly, over at The Dadman (an expert on how to father girls, as well as husband to Nancy Gruver, founder of New Moon Girls online community/magazine) sent me a press release discussing the 71% rise in chin implants in 2011, in large part driven by teen girls asking to have the procedure done…for prom.

That’s right, 20, 680 surgical procedures at $3,500-$7,000 a pop were performed last year. There has also been a spike in “ear-pinning,” (for those up-dos) which Darrick Antell, a spokesman for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, informally called “Clark Gable Wings.” Antell told the Sunday Times:

At proms in the past, teens would line up for photographs and face the camera. But the rise of more informal images, captured during video chats or by smartphones when they are leaning over a buffet maybe, has shown them angles of their face they had not seen in a mirror.

Oh, well in that case….

The HuffPo asks in a poll, “Do you think getting plastic surgery for prom is excessive?”

Like we need to vote on that????

Whether or not surgery for prom (or any teen cosmetic surgery. Or, for that matter, any cosmetic surgery on anyone) is excessive is not really the question. Nor do I want to get into a debate over what those girls’ parents were thinking. The issue to ponder  is, how, even as girls are higher achieving and better-educated than ever, did we get to this point? And how do we pull back from the brink?

Well, for starters, the culture that bombards girls  at unprecedentedly early ages  with an unattainable ideal of beauty, pressures them to define themselves from the outside in, tells them that the most important thing to their well-being and success is being the Fairest of them All. They learn over and over whether from their baby rattles or their  science kits or their flower seeds that who they are is how they look.

What’s more, these days, even the people who embody the unattainable, ideal haven’t actually attained it. That’s different than when I was young, and it messes with girls’ heads. One way to combat that is to make sure EVERY girl (and EVERY woman and EVERY boy and EVERY man) sees and discusses the Dove “Evolution” video. I’ve shown it to my daughter repeatedly.

Another good clip, especially for boys:

We can also support girls who are trying to make change. Here’s an opportunity: 14-year-old Julia Bluhm, a SPARK team member, has started a petition to ask Seventeen Magazine to run one–JUST ONE–un-altered photo spread a month in the publication.

I was a rabid fan of Seventeen as a girl. I sat down with my monthly issue the minute I got it and read it cover-to-cover. I mean that literally. I read every ad. I read every article. I didn’t jump to the back when an article did, I waited until I got to that page. I kept every issue–I think I may still have them–in a footlocker in my green room with its white patent crinkle-leather beanbag chair and its green swag lamp. I knew all the bylines and the names of all the models. Years later, I met folks who had written for the publication and they were shocked when I could quote their pieces back to them. (You can read about a modern girl’s love/hate with the iconic girl mag here). Seventeen is part of why I became a writer. It may also have contributed to the eating disorder I struggled with as a teen. So I don’t take the magazine’s influence lightly.

SPARK and Julia have  already gotten over 43,000 signatures on her change.org petition. I would love to see them get at least 50,000, so these marvelous girl activists know  that we adult women (and our daughters, sons, menfolk) are behind them.

In a supporting–and fun–activity, SPARK’s partner site, poweredbygirl.org invites girls (and adults) to contribute an on-line spoof of the current Seventeen cover.  I believe understanding and taking control of media messages can be transformative for girls, turning them from princesses into heroines. Why don’t you try it yourself and see?

 

 

(posted by avivajaye)