A defining feature of the generations thriving in this century is the need to be accepted and appreciated by others. This in turn gives birth to the need to change one’s appearance according to what the society deems as attractive. As more and more people turn to cosmetic alterations, we feel it is okay to tell our kids that it is fine if you don’t love yourself and want to change your look to meet everyone else’s standards. As a result, we don’t give much thought to whether it is really okay to go for it or can we do without it.
A breast implant, breast reduction, facelift or rhinoplasty costs somewhere around $4000 to $12000, which is a big sum to pay for looking different. While this can easily be afforded by the elite and celebrities, it often becomes a burden on the lower classes. They are forced to make tough arrangements in their budgets and even go bankrupt just to fix how they look or how their child looks.
Technology has enabled accelerated growth in this field and now we have a huge range of operational procedures for cosmetic surgeries of all kinds. Let us see how these different surgeries are spread across the globe in terms of their popularity.
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Image Source - Medzino[/caption]Breast augmentation is the first type of surgery that comes to mind when someone says the word cosmetic surgery. This is clearly reflected in the illustration above as we can see that breast surgeries account for 15.6% of all other types of cosmetic surgeries in the world. However, most surgeries are more or less consistent throughout the world, there is still a trend that distinguishes the rate of popularity for each kind of cosmetic surgery in various nations. Here is an illustration that will help you understand the correlation between cosmetic surgeries and socio-cultural differences.
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Image Source - Medzino[/caption]Japan stands out as the number one country with eyelid surgery as the most popular cosmetic surgery. It is indicative of the shift in cultural norms in Japan as the people tend to get highly influenced by Western culture in East Asian countries. Interestingly all other kinds of cosmetic surgeries are lower in Japan as compared to the rest of the world.
The main objective of this study is to pull attention from mindless facts and figures and really emphasize the trends in cosmetic surgeries around the world. One way to do it is how Medzino did it - to create a fun and interactive world map using Tableau which lets the user move around the globe by selecting a country or a type of surgery. It then takes you to the corresponding country or surgery type to show the relevant data.
Another aspect of this study revealed an important insight - both women and men are equally concerned about their looks in the modern world. As both the genders spend an equal amount of time and money on their personal appearance, it blurs the line between gender-based bias pertaining to self-enhancement and personality development. Here is what the study shows us with regards to gender-based surgical preferences -
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Image Source - Medzino[/caption]Although men are going for plastic surgeries more than ever, it is still self-evident that women far outweigh men in the number of cosmetic enhancements they undergo. A major cause of this is that since the beginning of this trend, women have had more options available to them which are exclusive to them and are not made for men’s biology. Tummy tucks and liposuction are the two surgeries that go beyond gender constraints, and men are far more involved in these categories than women - by a margin of 85% and 86% respectively!
Here is yet another graphical representation of breast enhancement surgeries - breast lift and breast implants plotted against cup size in women.
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Image Source - Medzino[/caption]Breast implants are far more prevalent than breast lifts according to the above graph. It also shows that women with cup size B are more likely to go under the knife to get their cleavage fixed.
Read the full report on reflections of cosmetic surgery worldwide here.