increase every year, there are three very popular ones. Eyelid surgery ranks first with around 465,000 procedures, followed by 288,000 breast augmentations, and 244,000 facelifts (Gottlieb 3). These numbers are small in comparison to what are called "lunch time" procedures, or ones performed under a local anesthesia and released the after the operation without a hospital stay. Over three million chemical peels and injections along with liposuction operations were performed in 2000 alone (5)! As critic Liz Stuart states, has plastic surgery become "a quest for the ordinary rather than the extraordinary?" (33) Plastic surgery can control what the future has in store for the aging process. Baby boomers want to look good enough to compete with the younger people. By "reinterpreting what it means to grow old," (English 16) they can clearly foresee another life ahead of them. Even though they might be fifty years old, inside they can feel twenty years young. Yet, does the line between reality and deceit become blurred by plastic surgery? One can say that society encourages people to hate themselves for being physically imperfect or looking old. Marketing and advertising point in different directions to confuse consumers about whom they really are. Many psychologists question whether there is a genuine person in every human being. "Because of technology we have many different audiences, many more types of people we have to appeal to. All these different groups have different senses of the ideal person, so we have a lot of criteria to meet. We end up being fragmented and emptying out the notion of any core being" (Kaminer 53-56). Keeping this powerful argument in mind, the only needy patients of plastic surgery are those with serious birth defects, burn victims, or disfigurement. Breakthroughs in artificial skin, tissue expansion, and nerve regeneration have been some advancements to help in the treatment of the most needy patients...
