Cosmetic/plastic surgery

How acceptable is it?

The number of cosmetic surgery procedures in Britain has risen by at least 50 per cent in the past year.

Around 75,000 of these procedures are carried out annually, many by surgeons who lack specialist qualifications, and at an estimated cost of £225 million.

The Government is today launching plans to regulate the industry. But does the wider and open use of 'nips and tucks' for women and men, make it acceptable, or should we be concerned about this worship of youth and glamour?

Martha talks to psychotherapist, Susie Orbach, and Zoe Williams

nip and tuck: plastic surgery to remove wrinkles and other signs of aging from your face; an incision is made near the hair line and skin is pulled back and excess tissue is excised; "some actresses have more than one face lift" [syn: face lift]

Listening exercise:
Listen to the six first minutes, note down the main ideas mention in the conversation and later ckeck with the summary-script if you were right.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2005_04_fri_03.shtml

One of my Christmas presents this year was a box-set of nip/ tuck, the American Drama about plastic surgery, perhaps it was not such a subtle hint , but I found every all sort of entertainment watching grues and bits of operations behind my fingers generally. But I guess it’s reflexion of the current obsession with cosmetic surgery.

The number of procedures in Britain has risen by 50o% in the last year and there are growing concerns about the standard of care. Today the government is announcing tough new controls over the industry.

A report by the Health Care commission, which regulates private medicine, estimates that fewer than half of the surgeons working in the field have the relevant specialist qualifications.
Earlier I spoke to Lord W. the Health Minister

We are concerned about:
a. Are all the facilities where this is done appropriately licensed?
b. Are all the people who are carrying out the procedure s appropriately qualified?
c. Is the public well informed enough about whether the places and the people who are undertaking work on their bodies are faithful purpose?
Are there at the moment doctors carrying out procedures who aren’t properly qualified in cosmetic surgery?
The great majority of people who are carrying out cosmetic surgery are on the specialist register or have a specialist qualification in this area
We have not evidence that unqualified in the sense that they are not registered doctors are doing this work
But there’s a small proportion 60/70 out of nearly 800 who are practising in this area who are not in the specialist register………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
They are dealing with the situation. They want to make this more secure given that it’s a rapidly expanding area of activity.
There’s particular concern about non-surgical procedures, we read in newspapers gruesome stories about botox parties.
I agree with you that there are rather gruesome stories that certainly wouldn’t be my cup of tea as a way to spend my time
And we want to ensure that these people only have these procedures with competent people and on licensed premises which are licensed by the Independent Health Care commission.
What seems to be happening is that the government and the regulation are unable to keep pace with the speed which this industry is growing.
…………………………………………………………. Not the same level of supervition……………..
I admit that there’s been a bit of free-lancing here and there and less supervision.
(Martha talks to psychotherapist, Susie Orbach, and journalist, Zoe Williams.)
Sisie, this huge rise in cosmetic surgery seem to become more and more socially acceptable is that something that concerns you?
Why is the number of women drawn into cosmetic surgery increasing?
Susie Orbach : absolutely I think we are fascinated with the programmes we first imported from the United States and we almost look at them like an anthropologist trying to discover another culture another country but they work on us at a certain level, but in a big global study of beauty I participated in:
Women are saying they are affected by the visual images in the world around them and are undermining their own sense of their own physical attractiveness and that they are drawn to plastic surgery because they don’t quite fit in with what they see, so there is a direct relationship between what we see on the billboards or on TV.
Is there a crisis of self-esteem?
People should be a bit tougher with themselves really, I mean we’ve got part of maturity is understanding that there is physical perfection just as there is kind of intellectual magnificence and you might not actually reach it. It’s accepting that some exists and just because you don’t fi t into it doesn’t mean that the whole world is undone.
I think female beauty and male beauty actually have been praise and loaded and depicted and iconographiesed ............................................

It goes on for another 7 minutes…………………………………

Note: Nip/Tuck is an American television medical drama series created by Ryan Murphy for FX Networks. The show follows the lives of two plastic surgeons, Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon).