AS I testily awaited my turn in a 5-items-or-less super market express checkout lane (while insolently cradling over a dozen un wieldy products in my ves tigial kangaroo foreleg-like arms), I found myself reduced to scrutinising the shopper ahead of me in a flailing attempt to kill time.

The attempt nearly resulted, instead, in my being killed, as my unsuspecting eyesight was brutally assaulted by the vis age of a middle-aged woman who had clearly experienced numerous head-on collisions with the heavy farming equip ment of adventurous plastic surgeons.

Sporting facial features con sidered fashionable only on undiscovered planets — bone structure inspired by the blue print of the Airbus and skin texture reminiscent of a used condom, my overly-enhanced fellow-shopper struck me as a spectacular showcase for the handiwork of amputee graffiti artists and presented a strong case for considering the burqa the hottest fashion accessory for Spring/Summer 2008.

Openly gaping at Plastic Fantastic as her purchases were expertly totalled, I half expected the cashier to in clude the woman’s face as part of the bill (where else but a supermarket could one buy a face-job that sub-standard?).

In spite of the aesthetic convulsions triggered by my run-in with the run-over wo man described above, I hasten to declare my undying support for the cosmetic surgery in dustry and not just because, as someone who resembles a diseased camel, I myself am in dire need of emergency recon struction.

Religious concerns placed respectfully aside, I find noth ing objectionable about the idea of resorting to invasive surgery to augment one’s ap pearance, which to me, simply sits on one extreme of the continuum of personal grooming practices.

If society no longer turns up its nose at nose piercings, raises its eyebrows over eye brow tattoos or pulls its hair out over hair-extensions, then it should find a space for plastic surgery at its collective vanity table.

Feverish objections are of ten made, by the Botox-de prived and silicone-deficient, that cosmetic surgery exposes the body to unnecessary risk and subjects it to tremendous trauma — all in the name of aesthetics.

Furthermore, they point out with their liver-spotted, wrinkle-riddled fingers, that the return on investment is invariably minimal, with results often falling far short of patients’ expectations.

Worse still, the tell-tale signs of cosmetic surgical tampering are painfully ascer tainable even to the untrained eye.

The Arctic-frozen facial ex pressions, swarm-of-scorpions-stung lips, flimsy-camp ing-tent noses and immob ile-in-an-earthquake breasts of many a celebrity have haunted our nightmares for years.

But my (sagging) re(butt)al to all this hand-wringing is that medical knowledge and surgical techniques are constantly evolving, and I foresee a future when doctors will be able to meet the fussiest patient’s specifications to a ‘T’, producing results which ap pear and feel entirely natural and using procedures no more traumatic than brushing one’s teeth.

And to those concerned with the ethical implications of tampering with what was given us by nature, I submit that the development of human civilisation — which saw the creation/discovery/perfec tion of everything from indoor plumbing to aviation, anti-de pressant drugs to nylon stock ings — involved much that can be classified as ‘unnatural’.

Finally, try to remember that ‘benevolent’ nature also gave us cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, smallpox, droughts, hurricanes and tsunamis.

And some very, very ugly people.

Jafwan Jaafar
Assistant editor
Lifestyle

Source: Malay Mail – January 17, 2008