bread_and_jam's blog

<>In two months, I'm off to college where I'll grow from a clingy teen into an independant adult. I imagine myself living alone, in a new place, with new people and new uncomfortable situations. I think about how unlikely it is I'll get along with my roommate. I wonder how difficult the classes will be and how I'll handle the stress. How nasty will the food be? I bet it'll take me forever to make friends. I know, I know, it's going to be much better than what I envision. But it's difficult to focus on the positive when you're freaking out about the negative. After all, there's no denying the first few months are going to be toughies.

My brother's an avid gamer. He's got the Nintendo 64, the Game Cube, and two or three different Gameboys. He even purchased a special kind of control (which he didn't need at all) in the shape of drums for a DK game he bought. But no matter how new the console he buys is, it's never enough. Five months after he gets it, a new one will be released, the old one will be unplugged, shoved in a corner and the smaller, shinier gadget will be left to gleam in its place. I criticize him for his materialism, but if he doesn't get the new consoles he won't be able to play the new games. In other words, often markets are not demand driven, but supply driven, contrary to what most people think. It's easy to cry out "We're being manipulated into buying what we don't need!", but if we think about it, it's a natural evolution that happens within a complex society. And don't we gain from such rapidly advancing tenchology? Faster services, more information; soon we may even be receiving personalized adds to our cell phones, computers and tvs at just the right times (according to Newsweek) making shopping that much easier. The latter is an example of how we have left the world of mass production to enter the world of customized production, a world that gives consumers even more drive to buy by offering exactly what they want, in the color they want it, when they want it.

I've only been on progressive u for a couple of days and I've already read at least two blog entries on how terrible plastic surgery is. People complain that everyone comes out looking the same, that they lose their identity or that people expect their self-esteem to go up when it probably won't. I'd like to shake things up a bit and put in a good word for plastic surgery.

First of all, many people's self esteem will go up after surgery. Much in the same way that you feel great about yourself after showing off a new shirt you love, plastic surgery can help a person project an image to the outside world he or she is happy with.
People worry that those who want surgery suffer from such low self-esteem that a single change in their body wont help them. However, it's one thing to recognize  that your nose is too big, or your breasts too small and to legitimately feel that a change would make you less self conscious. It's an entirely different thing to have a low self-esteem, in which case, no matter how many changes you make to your body, you'll never feel good about yourself.
Another thing to keep in mind is that plastic surgery is not all that different from losing weight through exercise and dieting. What I mean is that both cases inolve people searching for a better physical image. However, when someone loses weight, no one fears that the person may have lost part of what makes them 'them'. I think that, when it comes to surgery, people forget that, though someone's outer image has changed, they are still the same person inside.
I think, in general, it makes more sense to criticize those who jump into surgery without checking their own motivations or without properly checking out their surgeon, (and nasty surgeons who take advantage of their patients for that matter), rather than criticizing plastic surgery per-say.
So what am I saying, when done right, plastic surgery is not as horrifying as most people make it out to be.