Our system eats everything, not just its young

I was pleasantly surprised at this 23-minute video even though, as I outline below, I don’t think it went far enough.

Critic Stephanie Lange EXPOSES Disturbing Teen Plastic Surgery Trend by Glenn Greenwald (YouTube)

“I don’t think that fillers, especially, were half as popular, as they are now, if it weren’t for Kylie Jenner. She has had such a huge influence, especially for the younger generation. And people want to look like the Kardashians because they basically epitomize the beauty standard right now. They’ve got the big bum, the tiny waist, the big boobs, the perfect faces that look like they walk around with a filter 24/7, and women are told that, if we get BBLs [Brazilian Butt Lifts] and liposuction and botox and fillers and plastic surgery, then we can be as beautiful as the Kardashians. And, if you’re as beautiful as the Kardashians, you might also be as successful as the Kardashians. You might be able to live in a mansion and buy the latest designer handbag.

“Stephanie LangeI agree with you, it is destroying everything about us that makes us look unique. And that’s such a shame, because there is beauty in every single person. And that doesn’t mean that we all have to subscribe to the exact same beauty standard. […] You are being told that this is what you are supposed to look like as a women in 2024, if you want to be beautiful and have a good life and be successful. And, if you don’t look like that, I can see why women go down this route—because I did it myself. It takes a huge toll on your self-esteem and your self-worth.”

This is a good analysis but it doesn’t go the extra mile to say that the real problem is defining yourself by your appearance rather than by your…self. This isn’t a new problem nor is it a new solution, but perhaps a longer show would have analyzed how the push to consider yourself as only a shell without an interior is part of the push to consume. The point is to buy stuff. This is just one of the routes to that goal. The slavering maw of the economy doesn’t care that women’s self-esteem and health is damaged, or that people are dying, because people are buying fillers and surgery and designer handbags.

Every discussion that starts like this should end in a criticism of our system.

If not for our system—unreasonable incentives coupled with a complete lack of ethical standards and a rapacious focus on accumulation and consumption—none of this would be happening. You wouldn’t find surgeons willing to give 16-year-olds boob jobs if the system hadn’t indoctrinated a veritable army of people all wanting more, and more, and more money, no matter what the cost to others.

None of this would be happening if the system weren’t training people to value inordinate wealth and power over basic human decency and ethics, if it weren’t making the argument “if I don’t so it, someone else will, so I might as well get that cheddar” the leading justification for doing anything that might otherwise be considered unsavory.

This madness for plastic surgery is bad, but it’s just a symptom of something much more insidious.