What’s so fantastic about body plastic?

KATY HARRINGTON

I’m not a fan of cosmetic surgery, for many reasons. One, because it’s stupidly expensive and frankly I’d prefer to spend £500 on a holiday than having my face frozen and my cheeks ‘plumped’ until I look like glazed ham. Secondly, because a trip to the Botox clinic sounds like a pretty horrific day out to me — needles, blood and all you get in return is a wipe-clean Formica forehead for four months. As for the more ‘invasive’ surgery like liposuction (a procedure about as delicate as hoovering out the boot of the car) or a facelift, where your skin is cut, stretched and stapled further back on your head, I think I’d prefer to take my chances of ending up ageing like Keith Richards, thanks. Anyway, I’m too squeamish for it all. I once had two wisdom teeth taken out and I’ve still to fully recover from the horror of puking blood into a kidney shaped tray with my white bum hanging out the back of the surgical gown.

I know some of the arguments for: ‘why not, if you can afford it?’ ‘What’s wrong with wanting to look your best?’ etc. To which the answers are nothing, I suppose, but maybe that money would be better spent on a few therapy sessions to address why you feel the need to alter the unique face you were born with to conform to a Hollywood standard of beauty, and if by ‘your best’ you mean a face that doesn’t move. I guess if you boil it all down, cosmetic surgery is a business that runs on people’s insecurities, particularly womens’s. There are a lot of quacks out there peddling stories about the benefits of Botox who I wouldn’t trust to mow my lawn and the end game is a world where everyone ends up looking similar. Usually I’d be of the ‘do it if it makes you happy’ mentality, but with cosmetic surgery I worry that too many people do it because they are sad.