Michelle Obama’s arms are real; arm-lift cosmetic surgery is just skin deep
Michelle Obama's arms — toned and lithely — are inspiring. Unfortunately, they've inspired 15,000 people to undergo arm-lift cosmetic surgery. The whole notion of beauty, twisted again.
Underarm plastic surgery procedures have spiked — toned arms are in, it seems — some 4,000 percent in the past year. Plastic surgery is becoming more commonplace and easier to access. Here, an iPhone app called BuildMyBod lets users view plastic surgery procedures and their costs. 2011.
PR Newsire
It’s my first day back to Modern Parenthood after maternity leave. So you can imagine the excitement when I saw this new item from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons: arm lift surgery, the group has announced, increased 4,473 percent in the past decade, making it the fastest rising cosmetic surgery around.
Skip to next paragraph
Correspondent
Stephanie Hanes is the lead writer for Modern Parenthood and a longtime Monitor correspondent. She lives in Andover, Mass. with her husband, Christopher, her daughter, Madeline Thuli, a South Africa Labrador retriever, Karoo, and an imperialist cat named Kipling.
Recent posts
-
05.01.13
Michelle Obama’s arms are real; arm-lift cosmetic surgery is just skin deep -
04.30.13
A boy, 9, in India is driving a Ferrari while my son, 17, confused R for D -
04.27.13
Breast-pump mom 'humiliated' on American Airlines flight -
04.26.13
Sorority e-mail writer, N.D. news anchorman: They needed mom's swear jar -
04.26.13
Prince Harry on diaper duty: God save the Queen, or England could goto the men! [+video]
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
Yes, that’s upper arm tucks. And why not? Last year we wrote about chin implants becoming trendy. If you can do chins, might as well throw arms in there, too, right? After all, as the ASPS found in a poll that “women are paying closer attention to the arms of female celebrities.”
RECOMMENDED: The top 11 promposals in 2013
Call it the Michelle Obama effect, plastic surgery style. Toned, muscle-bound arms are in. So start snipping.
Sigh.
This is a parenting blog, so it’s tempting to start ranting now about the message this sends to our little girls. (I have two now. I’m sensitive to this stuff.) Or to write about how it’s so not OK to make me take a second look at my own triceps two months postpartum.
And sure, moms and dads out there certainly don’t need yet another trend that seems designed to make young women feel bad about themselves. Five percent of plastic surgeries are already done on children between the ages of 13 and 19, including more than 8,000 of the country’s 286,274 breast augmentations and 33,673 nose jobs, according to the ASPS. Overall, there were 1.5 million cosmetic surgeries last year, with everything from buttock lifts to cheek implants.
But last year’s 15,000-plus arm lifts seem extra special problematic.
Perhaps this is because it turns a positive for little girls – athleticism, strength, power – into something superficial.
Or maybe because it suggests that the end result of physical work, whether in the gym or on the sports field or in a construction zone, should be attainable to everyone, even if you’re not so into sweating.
These messages, I’d venture, are more troubling than the old “you don’t look like a model so you’re not as worthy” memo that somehow makes it onto the desk of teenage girls everywhere.
Still, not all is doom and gloom for a new mom who believes her babies should feel beautiful as they are.
This wasn’t as publicized as the new arm surgery trend, of course, (and did I mention that the online press material had a helpful picture of a woman pinching her underarm skin?) but the numbers of children’s cosmetic surgeries is down.
RECOMMENDED: The top 11 promposals in 2013
There were 8 percent fewer breast augmentations among teens in 2012 than in 2011, 12 percent fewer chin augmentations (how trends fade), and 2 percent fewer liposuctions. (Botox treatments were up 8 percent among the teenage set, but so it goes.)
Maybe it’s the economy. But maybe, just maybe, more teens are learning to be happy with the way they look.
Or at least content with Photoshop.
These comments are not screened before publication. Constructive debate about the above story is welcome, but personal attacks are not. Please do not post comments that are commercial in nature or that violate any copyright[s]. Comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence will be removed. If you find a comment offensive, you may flag it.