Silicone Injections & The Twilight Zone
posted by Heidi Kitrosser
Frank previously has blogged about the “Beauty-Industrial Complex.” This story in today’s L.A. Times is another reminder of the serious health risks through which some people will put themselves in the quest for eternal youth and “beauty.” As the blurb under the headline sums it up, “‘Dr. Daniel’ gets prison after injecting Beverly Hills women with a wrinkle remover better suited to a Bentley.” The injections were given at fancy house parties … sort of like tupperware parties with industrial-grade silicone, loads of cash and syringes.
All of this reminds me, by the way, of an excellent old Twilight Zone episode: “Eye of the Beholder” — the picture above is a scene from the same.
December 6, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Posted in: Feminism and Gender
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Responses (3)
Frank - December 6, 2006 at 5:13 pm
That was a *great* Twilight Zone episode. Wonderful lesson on the relativity of looks. Some of the biggest advocates of plastic surgery are those who, bizarrely, believe there is some “science of beauty:”
“Stephen Marquardt, a reconstructive surgeon in Southern California who has made a career of studying beauty, would say that . . . response[s to appearance are] hard-wired. Marquardt is one of a number of doctors and scientists probing the machinery that connects perceptions of beauty with human evolution. Beauty, they theorize, is the name we give to certain signals processed instinctively by our animal brains. It isn’t invented by Hollywood or fashion magazines so much as it is programmed into our DNA.”
from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/08/AR2006110801477_pf.html
mike - December 7, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Having had lots of experience in the psychology of why people ‘want’ to ‘be beautiful, improve their looks, etc. – (as I worked for years in the medical industry and am still involved in the world of plastic surgery, though from a certin distance, now) – I’d say (unscientifically of course) that most people want to look their ‘best’ to simply feel better about themselves – and hopefully attract a mate: whether for a casual and satisfying sexual encounter or a more long-lasting and committed romance. There is a common ‘gut’ truth to that.
What triggers the complex perception of beauty and sexual attraction is indeed CLEARLY embedded in genetic codes (as another thread previously noted) – which we all have uniquely, and chemically – stamped on our DNA – perhaps carried into the living cellular/nuclear level via RNA.
But keeping it simple for now: All serious medical research today involves deep research at the nanotechnological level (and smaller) to dissect fully the DNA helix, chromosomes, and chemically-based codons (oh…just think of the impact of pheromones on “attraction.”) that create the just a minute part of a thing known collectively as one’s ‘life force’; and perhaps chemical cum physiologic/intellectual/suceed/fail destiny – and more recently how that life force is driven throughout life – and sadly – to certain metabiological preponderances to addiction, illness, recovery, malingering, or at worst, death. One of the myriad behavioral traits that confound is that involving beauty and attraction – and the need to feel ‘better’ about oneself via medical interventions to that end.
What risks one takes for plastic surgery is based largely, superfically, on trends; provided by these glamour parties (at the most extreme) complete with poor or non-existent pre-procedural patient work-ups: indeed a health risk – and then there is the question of who (what certified medical professional is performing the said procedures? Is the silicone medium really legal for use in humans?)
shannon - May 31, 2007 at 4:57 pm
is the injections lethal in your buttocks!
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