The pursuit of the perfect female body is not a realistic goal for any woman, regardless of what plastic surgery techniques exist. Improving your own body through diet and exercise, and perhaps a little plastic surgery, is a more common sense approach. Women should only want to have good body proportions that fall within the confines that their genetics will allow.
The Barbie doll, although known to have features that are not anatomically realistic or even attainable, has always been held as a female to emulate. (at least in the doll world) While the Barbie look is not one women should really admire, it is perhaps interesting what one would have to go through with plastic surgery to achieve it. In the October issue of O magazine, model Katie Halchishick serves as a example of what she would have to do to achieve Barbie proportions. Posing for a photographer, she used her body to diagram out what she would surgically have to do to change her features to achieve those proportions and shape.
Based on this photographic diagraming, she would need the following facial changes including a browlift, shaving of the jawline, nose reshaping, neck contouring and chin augmentation. For the body she would need a breast lift, arm liposuction and a tummy tuck…and that is just the upper half of her.
While this is an entertaining and humorous exercise, it does serve to illustrate a point. Pursuit of so called ideal body proportions, or even an unnatural body shape like that of Barbie, is not a healthy goal…even if plastic surgery could make it possible. Plastic surgery should be used to enhance the face and body shape that women already have rather than pursuing excessive surgery to try and achieve what you weren’t meant to be. This is a healthy and more psychologically balanced approach to plastic surgery that many teenage and younger women would be wise to note.
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana