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Stolen post: BONUSES & IDEOLOGY »

It’s happened

This has to be one the saddest things I’ve read all week.

…cosmetic surgery is now primarily consumed not by the rich, but by the working and lower-middle classes, sometimes even by the poor.  According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), about 1/3 of cosmetic surgery is consumed by people who make less than $30,000 a year.  About 70% of it is consumed by people who make less than $60,000 a year. It is mostly women (90%) and mostly white, middle-aged women (80% and between 35-55 years old).

If past trends are much to go by, this is something we might possibly expect here in the UK and elsewhere in the West (not to mention Japan).

The fashion/beauty industry, for years the source of an irrepressible esteem-destroying, envy creating lifeforce targeted primarily at the very well-to-do with nothing better to do with their money, has now shat all over the minds of people who quite frankly ought to have better things to spend their money on, than plumping up their lips. Let’s not forget the role of lower class diet, doubtless a tidy earner for US liposuctioners.

Once again, business interests walk leash in hand with complacent middle and lower class sheep (a sheep, on a leash?) lacking better sense than to accept and be subject to (and typically pay for exposure to!) that noxious influence and keep their hand in their pockets for objectively valuable endeavours.

Oh, and hurrah for a reduction in the cost of getting cosmetic surgery. What a boon for society that we now have such an ‘affordable’ means to tackle the symptoms (but not the cause!) of endemic low assertiveness and wisdom.

You can’t even argue that it significantly helps intelligent, but not very good looking people (in an age where looks supposedly matter more) to pass on their DNA to the next generation: 80% of people getting cosmetic surgery are women approaching menopausal age anyway.

(via Marginal Revolution)

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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