China sees massive rise in teen/adolescent plastic surgery
Plastic surgery was mostly the domain of middle aged people desperately fighting age, or appeasing vanity.
Things are changing in China, where plastic surgery is drawing in Chinese youth in droves. Almost 80% of plastic surgery procedures happening over the course of this summer were on young people in the senior high school – college age group says a study done by the China Medical Treatment Orthopedics and Beauty Association. What has changed in the span of about five years is that whereas earlier young people who were almost out of college came in to fix their bodies, now even younger people come in to fix themselves before enrolling in college.
Most of the youth feel that enhancing themselves or wiping out what they consider to be flaws will help them in the job market, reports a Chinese newspaper. Treatments that are much in demand include breast enlargements, double eyelid surgeries and nose jobs.
The Association that conducted the study anticipates that almost 90% of young people in this age group will go for plastic surgery in the coming years. Researchers say that the main factors behind this are increasingly difficult employment chances and a rise in beauty standards. Arguably the ill effects of globalization. Young people are increasingly relying on how they look to boost their self confidence, and this works doubly to their advantage when appearing for job interviews.
More and more parents are also becoming supportive of their children opting for such procedures. The competitive job market is an increasing cause of concern to them, and they would like to see their children in a good job, happy with how they look, says a psychologist. This could well be another encouraging factor for the boom in cosmetic procedures. According to a source at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, this summer has seen an average of ten students coming in per day for procedures at the orthopedics department.
Doctors have been noticing that since the start of summer vacation, there has been a leap in numbers of students coming in for different procedures. In some places 10 times more students have come in during this year than had visited during the months when school is open over the past two years. Most of them report that although most requests are for nose jobs and double eyelid surgery, there has been a noticeable increase in breast implants and laser treatments.