Plastic Surgery and Darwin Principles

General, Plastic Surgery Comments (0)

The day may come when you must make a written disclaimer that you’ve had:

• Breast augmentation
• Nose surgery
• Face lift
• Other plastic surgery that affects appearance

Doctoral candidate Kristi Scott, writing in Journal of Evolution and Technology worries about the Darwinian ethics of cosmetic plastic surgery.

It’s because we humans are hard-wired to read both female and male beauty as signs the person:

• Has superior, healthy genes
• Is a good possible mate
• Will produce healthy offspring

Thus, a woman’s substantial bust line, symmetrical face and rounded haunches impacts males’ primitive brains with a message saying:

• “H-m-m-m-m-m, woman, pretty. Good!”

And then he goes back to doing what males do best, watching TV sports.

A female who spies a man with large muscles and other manly features like an aquiline nose thinks in the primitive part of her brain:

• “H-m-m-m-m-m-m, man, strong. Good!”

And then she goes back to doing what she does best, shopping, knowing the bills will be covered.

But, given cosmetic plastic surgery, are we passing off ordinary genes as superior, thereby skipping some inborn genetic coding? It’s critical because so many young people are having rejuvenation surgery.

Writes Author Scott: “People who otherwise might not have been perceived as desirable mates of procreation allow themselves to be perceived as desirable enough to pass on their genes.”

So, the only ethical thing to do is make a disclosure.

Scott may be on the right track: we already disclose almost everything anyhow. If a peanut has come within 100 miles of any manufacturing equipment, boom! The disclosure is with letters a foot tall.

In the plastic surgery office of the future, special forms would be filled out to disclose any changes in any person’s appearance and then post on the Internet.

Want to sign up for Match.com in 2025? Make sure your plastic surgeon has signed your disclosures! Want to be an egg or sperm donor? Only the unchanged need apply!

Not to stray from the point, but disclosure can reach ridiculous levels.

In a restroom, a disclosure sign on an endless loop towel machine read: “Do not place head and neck into towel loop. Hanging is possible.” (We are NOT making this up!)

Already, a new book, UGLIES tells about a future time when all children are raised by the state and subjected to mandatory cosmetic surgery at 16.

admin @ August 17, 2009