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New Book Helps Mothers Explain Why They’re Getting Plastic Surgery |
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| It's never too early to instill self-hate in your child | ||
 by Izzy Grinspan, April 16, 2008 |
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By the way, the image of the mom in the green shirt is a "before" picture: Isn't she just the fattest fat-ass?Hey parents, concerned that your kids are suffering from too much self-esteem? Does your six-year-old stand to inherit a big Ashkenazi snout, and is she distressingly cavalier about this eventuality? Luckily, a Florida plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael Salzhauer is here to help.
Salzhauer’s new children’s book, My Beautiful Mommy, follows a mother as she explains to her little girl why she’s going in for plastic surgery. "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore,” the mom says. Then she comes home skinnier -- and with a new nose. Because the only thing kids like better than having a parent in the hospital is a half-assed explanation of what they’re doing there.
Newsweek, reporting on the story, gets a child psychologist named Elizabeth Berger to play the voice of reason.
Then there are the body image issues raised by cosmetic surgery—especially for daughters. Berger worries that kids will think their own body parts must need "fixing" too. The surgery on a nose, for example, may "convey to the child that the child's nose, which always seemed OK, might be perceived by Mommy or by somebody as unacceptable," she says.
Yeah, no shit. By the way, the surgeon in the book is named “Dr. Michael” and is portrayed as a teeny head on a jacked-up mega-torso. Body image issues for everybody!
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Anonymous
Yech. Get a sitter, leave
Yech. Get a sitter, leave the kid out of the office visits, have some household help afterward, and reassure the kid repeatedly that Mom will be all right. It's not the poor child's business exactly what is going on. Who made him her best girlfriend? And why did the little boy ever see his mother's wrinkled stomach, anyway? Children don't need to see more of their parents' bodies than the neighbors. Nose jobs are great, if you have a truly, really, awful nose. Otherwise, they are just not done, ok, kid? That principle can be explained to a child, later. You don't tamper, permanently, with a face, without a very, very good reason. The risk of looking phony is enormous. Eventually, people who look at you every day are going to realize you had your nose done. For some reason, this injures your face's credibility and authenticity. Maybe that 's not fair, but there it is. So keep your nose, if at all possible.
Anonymous
Reality check
Why are we being so reassuring? This is major surgery and it is NOT certain that mommy will be just fine. In fact, she might die due to complications with the anaesthesia, or infection. But we don't tell that to little kids when parents go into surgery because it would be upsetting. Maybe mommy should consider this fact when choosing major elective surgery while she has little ones at home (who probably need real mommy and not replacement-step-mommy-cuz-mommy-went-to-heaven-mommy). What's for sure is that mommy will definitely come back looking different (a terrifying prospect for a kid), and she will probably have to have a series of maintenance surgeries over the rest of her life to keep up with her boob job. Yeah, there is actually a boob job in this book, but that part of the story is told only in pictures because Dr. Boca Raton didn't want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. "Timmy, mommy needs to feel like a woman again because you've ruined mommy's body by using it for several of its most essential purposes."
I am less concerned about the message that plastic surgery sends to children than with the entire situation of children being raised by mommies with such damaged psyches. How are you supposed to tell your child to be comfortable with his/her nascent self when you can't deal with yours?
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