Beauty is an abstract concept. It takes all forms: physical beauty (e.g. nature); emotional beauty (e.g. compassion, love); intellectual beauty (e.g. an elegant argument that proves a proposition); moral beauty (selfless behavior); spiritual beauty (your own Self). It is never an external phenomenon. It’s not a quality of the object itself. If that were the case, then everyone would see the same things as beautiful. The source of all beauty, then, is internal.
But in the materialistic world, it seems as if only physical appearance holds importance and no one really cares about being beautiful from the inside out.
As difficult as it is to feel content in one’s own skin these days, self-image and personal brand have become so big that people have forgotten what it means to live in a natural state and form. People are increasingly getting obsessed with enhancing their outer appearance by going under the needle. So much that cosmetic surgery has become synonymous with reinventing yourself, becoming a new ‘you’, a transformation which is supposedly responsible for correcting your looks and bringing out self-confidence and boosting self-esteem.
To top it off, technological advancements have led to an outburst in the number of surgical procedures available for the masses. As can be understood from the infographic given below, most cosmetic surgeries are consistently popular across the world. But a closer inspection reveals an interesting trend.
Japan is visibly the only country with the highest fluctuation in surgical popularity as eyelid surgeries are prevalent than any other country. Interestingly enough, in Japan, other types of surgeries are less common than in other countries. This is a clear indication of just how much influence western culture has on the East Asian people. In a desperate attempt to appear more western, people end up altering their face shapes in eastern countries.
The best way to understand the gravity of the situation is by plotting the various types of surgeries in the world against their respective popularity in different countries. Across the globe, most cosmetic surgeries offered are consistent in their popularity. However, on closer inspection – a variation is revealed that could potentially correlate with specific social and cultural differences. This section of the report illustrates the popularity of each surgical procedure across the globe.
Clearly the US ranks first in the breast implants category, but interestingly, the US also happens to be the nation that has the most number of cosmetic surgery cases worldwide. If we had to hypothesize the reasons behind this – the influence of Hollywood and the overtly publicized idea that ‘bigger is better’ would be the biggest ones amongst other external factors responsible for this trend.
Surprisingly enough, China and Japan are the biggest hotspots for Liposuction and eyelid surgeries respectively. A possible explanation for this is that East Asia is under a massive cultural influence from the West and its beauty standards, giving a false message of wide-eyed people being more attractive than those with narrow eyes – the natural genetic make-up of the East Asian population. Nowadays people are also going for fox eyes fix treatment to change the shape of your eyes.
From an economic standpoint, this can also be due to cheaper operations and surgical costs in China as compared to the West. “Nose-jobs” or rhinoplasties are a big thing in Turkey and Thailand, which again can be due to cheaper costs for such procedures and thus attracting the worldwide population for getting a cosmetic job done on their noses.
Before you get lost amidst all these facts and figures, let us come back to the whole point of this campaign – to gauge the prominence of cosmetic surgeries in the present day world so as to spread awareness about its pros and cons.
For more insights and trends about cosmetic surgery and related procedures, check out this report by Medzino.
These extensive findings derived from a sea of data are not to overwhelm you. A different approach to data visualization is adopted in the above map with an intention to help readers get a better understanding of the situation. If you notice carefully, it is evident that India is at the forefront of hair transplantation and penis enlargement surgeries. North and South America, Russia, and China are the major frontmen of the surgical fad, apart from that, the results are fairly evenly spread across the world.
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