Do You Take Plastic?
In the same week that Miss Universe crowns its new queen, MeetTheBoss.tv asks: does the cosmetic surgery industry really sell perfection?
From full-on, life-changing procedures, to a quick hit of Botox during your lunch hour, plastic-surgery aficionados are witnessing an industry boom. Our obsession with the search for perfection is everywhere: from magazine and television advertisements, to our fixation with Hollywood stars, it comes as no surprise that surgical enhancements are, for many, becoming less of a taboo and more of a norm.
The search for (and, possibly, maintenance of) physical perfection is probably most transparent in the world of beauty pageants: and no pageant does it better than Miss Universe.
On Monday night, Mexico’s Jimena Navarette was crowned Miss Universe 2010, in a victory that stunned a pageant world who had previously predicted a winner to emerge from either Ireland, Venezuela or the US.
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In fact, the US, the world’s most surgically enhanced nation, has also won the most Miss Universe titles in the competition’s history; and sources at Donald Trump’s Miss Universe Organization last year revealed that not only are elective surgery procedures allowed, they are “quietly encouraged”.
“In many countries, from the time she wins the national title to the time she goes to Miss Universe, she basically goes through a witness protection program, is sketched up, and totally changed,” the insider leaked.
It begs the question of whether Navartette will really look the same when she hands back her multi-million dollar tiara next year? Or, in fact, whether she looks the same now as she did a year ago?
Of course, this doesn’t mean that a nation’s appetite for cosmetic surgery equates to true beauty. Venezuela, for instance – second place in terms of how many Miss Universe titles it has won – features twentieth in terms of surgical procedures being carried out in a nation.
So does selling breast augmentations, facelifts and rhinoplasty really make the world more beautiful? Maybe not, when beauty is only skin deep, it seems to be working wonders for the world of beauty pageants, at least.
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