The Misguided Quest for Childhood Beauty

A growing phenomenon in our society is people’s willingness to go under the knife to change a certain aspect of their appearance. However, the youngest members of our society, now more than ever, are beginning to undergo cosmetic surgery for non-medical reasons. These surgeries include breast enhacement, liposuction, and a westernizing eye surgery mainly performed on people of Asian decent. There is no specific medical implications behind these surgeries; simply a parent’s quest for beauty in their children at increasingly younger ages.
The ethical issue behind these cosmetic surgeries performed on youth is the fact that parents are the ones giving consent to this surgery, even though their children are still in the developmental process. Undergoing these procedures at such a young and vulnerable age limits the children’s autonomy by taking away their right to make a decision that should really be made later on when they are adults. Not only are these procedures going against nature, but moreover, cosmetic surgery is meant for those who have developed fully and who have made the personal decision to change an aspect of their appearance.
In effect, parents giving consent to their children going under the knife to improve their looks places too high of a value on beauty and perfection in the youngest members of our society. We need to place a higher value on children and their natural development into healthy adults, rather than attempt to perfect them physically before they have had a chance to determine for themselves what aspects of their appearance they desire to change.
The article touches on the controversial issue that parents of children with gender identity disorder face when deciding whether to intervene with psychotherapy or accommodate the gender with which their child identifies by allowing them to undergo surgery for the cooresponding male or female characteristics. Although I agree that this issue is one of the most sensitive involving cosmetic surgery, I think that they more important question we should ask is whether we need to do anything at all at such a young age in a child’s development. Though developing in a body that one feels is not the correct gender may be somewhat of a traumatic experience, I feel that parents should provide support to their child by nurturing them just as they would any other child. In this way, once these children reach adulthood and can make decisions for themselves, they have the autonomy to decide whether they want to undergo gender changes. Above all, parents should not be making decisions for non-medical cosmetic surgery for their children, but rather should be loving and supporting in the natural development processes of their child in order to raise a child who is confident and has a good sense of his or her internal and external beauty.

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