Plastic surgery in Lebanon, oppression, and Benjamin

Remark: The overwhelming majority of plastic surgeries in Lebanon is performed on women. In this article, I focus on plastic surgeries that women undergo, although some ideas apply to both genders.

Since the advent of plastic surgery to Lebanon, a relatively stable trope has entered our common imaginary: the trope of the corruption of "real" beauty by plastic surgery. This trope is sustained by the "meta-trope" that is lamenting about the general decline of Lebanese society (e.g., "ma ba2 fi awedim," which roughly translates to "people/men with morals can no longer be found").

My thesis is that plastic surgery is better than we think for our society because it allows for the democratization of beauty.

Of course, plastic surgery is not accessible for everyone. And of course, plastic surgery can sometimes ruin someone's appearance. However, with technological progress and the maturation of the industry, the trend is clearly towards a minimization of these two problems.

Whether we like it or not, Lebanese society places a lot of importance on women's appearance. This leads one's perception of one's physical appearance to become central not only in terms of self-esteem, but also in terms of economic and affective outcomes - in other words, how beautiful a Lebanese woman is is an important factor in determining the "quality" and endowment of her future husband.

Because of that, being perceived and/or perceiving oneself as unattractive is crushing and, before plastic surgery, there was very little one could do about it. Plastic surgery allows for beauty to become accessible and for a woman's physical appearance to stop being a "given." The best analogy to beauty in Lebanese society is socio-economic status. Ceteris paribus, a society is better off with more social mobility because being on the bottom in a society with more mobility does not mean that you will stay on the bottom all your life. I think the insight carries to the analogous case. Seen from this perspective, plastic surgery becomes a liberating influence rather than a corrupting one.

To go back to the trope mentioned at the beginning of this post, I think that it's completely ridiculous to value "authentic beauty" over manufactured beauty. Yes, sometimes, manufactured beauty is not pretty. And yes, sometimes, you start feeling like everyone has the same nose. But it seems to me that there is something else that bothers Lebanese people who hate on women with a nose job: even if the result does not look fake, and even if it does not look like every other "fake" nose, the hate still flows.

This tendency brings to mind Benjamin's concept of the "aura" of the work of art. For Benjamin, the appreciation of the work of art (as opposed to the appreciation of its manufactured replica) is inextricably linked to outmoded concepts of art as the product of transcendence and "genius." This mode of reception of the work of art associates an aura to the original work that does not exist in the reproduction of that work.

Analogously, it seems like we like to think of a woman's body and her physical appearance like a sacred object that loses its sacrality when it's altered. I think that mode of thought is fundamentally oppressive and tied to a very conservative view of beauty. In order to be consistent, people who hold such a view would need to express the same disapproval towards those who use creams to improve the quality of their skin or those who are trying to get in shape.

On that note, my (hopefully) daily run is waiting for me -- looking forward to hearing people's thoughts!

PS: The Benjamin essay I am referring to is The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It is absolutely brilliant.