Cosmetic Surgery and the Wedding Industry — a Rant

By Claire

This could get messy…

Here’s the email I found in my inbox this morn­ing:
I can’t fault Bella’s polite approach, but it’s cer­tainly a one-email-fits-all thing, so I don’t feel bad about my response. She’s only ask­ing for a guest post about skin­care… all per­fectly harm­less (I’ve noth­ing against mois­turiser!)  — but the string attached would be a nice back­link to a blog about cos­metic surgery. Kerching?

My reply to the email (sadly it’s one of many)

I have strong feel­ings about any­one in the busi­ness of mak­ing money from people’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties… this is me explain­ing that quite nicely:

It’s a topic I find it dif­fi­cult to be too nice about — that’s as polite as I wanted to be.

My opin­ions on surgery:

  1. I have no prob­lem with surgery after an acci­dent. Severe burns and scar­ring can be trau­matic — if an oper­a­tion or two will help, it’s a good thing.
  2. I don’t like van­ity. I don’t like our society’s per­cep­tion of beauty. I don’t agree that surgery is the answer to a crooked nose, small boobs, wrin­kles, a big tummy, saggy bum… what­ever. The answer is to accept whichever of your bits you don’t like. Simple.
  3. There are huge risks. Gen­eral anaes­thet­ics shouldn’t be taken with as lit­tle care as, say, Smarties.
  4. This is a multi-million pound indus­try feed­ing off people’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. That’s not nice.

Cos­metic surgery and the wed­ding industry:

The big clin­ics like Trans­form (ick) have spot­ted a gap in the mar­ket over the last year or two. Brides. An easy tar­get, they seem to think. Every bride wants to look per­fect on her wed­ding day. How patro­n­is­ing and con­de­scend­ing is that?!

Brides also have a lot of money — if they’re pre­pared to spend £x,xxx on a venue, cater­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, flow­ers… these busi­nesses want some.

So these com­pa­nies have been adver­tis­ing in wed­ding mag­a­zines, and they’re now try­ing to get in with the wed­ding blogs. They’ll never, ever get any adver­tis­ing space on Eng­lish Wed­ding. (I’m also try­ing to avoid using words which will encour­age their Google adver­tis­ing on this post.)

The real beauty in wed­dings — it’s not about cup size

Because beauty is inside us, and being pretty on the out­side is the tini­est lit­tle part of that. Accept­ing our flaws and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties makes us more lov­able. Your hus­band will love you for who you are — warts and all, as the say­ing goes.

I think get­ting mar­ried is a sign of matu­rity. The same kind of matu­rity which can lead a girl to accept those bits of her­self she’s not so keen on — after all, when some­one falls in love with you exactly as you are, you learn to see your­self through their eyes.

And they love the bumpy, wrinkly and bent bits on the out­side of you, just as much as they love the soul on your inside.

The idea of spend­ing £5k on inva­sive pro­ce­dures to lift, mold and shape parts of a person’s body seems ridiculous.

The per­fect wed­ding — love and com­mit­ment (not skin)

Hav­ing a per­fect wed­ding isn’t about flaunt­ing your per­fect body. It’s not about your fig­ure or your face — it’s about shar­ing your love as a cou­ple with all of your friends and fam­ily, com­ing together in cel­e­bra­tion and mak­ing a commitment.

Mar­riage means you’ll be together for­ever. Your wed­ding day marks the first day of that life­time com­mit­ment — and these busi­nesses who are after your money for surgery don’t even see that.

Keep your focus, think about being mar­ried for the next thirty, forty, fifty or sixty years — and join me in stick­ing two fin­gers up at the cos­metic surgery com­pa­nies who can’t see the beauty in grow­ing old and wrinkly together.