by Olha Romaniuk

Created on: January 30, 2008

Every day millions of people, including all of us, are bombarded by various images from magazines, TV and advertisements. We are constantly pressured to look thiner, tanner, taller, blonder. The trends come but never has the media standard of "beautiful" been fully attainable, or even possible for the majority of the population. It seems that none of us can look in a mirror any more without pointing out some flaws about ourselves. Even those men and women who we consider absolutely gorgeous are not all necessarily happy with the way they look. Even runway models can succumb to a pressure of being thinner, younger, more exotic.

That is why plastic surgeons are literally making their fortune on other peoples' insecurities. They cash in on desires of those who can afford to go for a nip and a tuck. For some, plastic surgery can even become an addiction. Nearly twelve million cosmetic procedures were preformed in the United Stated in the year 2006 alone, with breast augmentation being the number one procedure for women.

While some choose to change their appearance under a knife for legitimate reasons, such as for health or to correct a visible deformity, most of plastic surgery recepients are simply not happy with the way they look. Their decision to go under a knife, thus, is strictly to get rid of insecurities about their cheekbones that are not high enough, lips that are not full enough, breasts that are not big enough. Contrary to their beliefs, though, their insecurities don't go away after the surgery. In fact, that is why many people become plastic surgery addicts - they become enveloped in a constant race for perfection. A race that they will never win.

But what is perfect? What is beautiful? Even now when we look at the paintings of nudes of the 16th and 17th century masters, we often criticize the featured women for being fat, or not attractive enough to be painted. Many will look at Mona Lisa and say that she was probably not worthy of the great DaVinci immortalizing her on canvas, since she was, after all, a plain-looking girl.

Our beauty standards and tastes are fickle, like our sense of which outfit is fashionable and which one can be considered hideous. Simply put, we are confused. We don't know what we want and, of course, many of us want what we don't have. We take the same attitude with our appearances as we do with our possessions. We are envious of our neighbor's new iPod but once we finally get one, we might forget about it just a few weeks later

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