Cosmetic Surgery

Yesterday I watched a fascinating documentary, Frontline Medicine, which explored some of the amazing breakthroughs that have been made in saving and rebuilding lives. Part of the program followed a young man who had burned his entire face off in an accident. He is one of the few that has received the still very experimental face transplant. Cosmetic surgery has developed incredibly in working with the wounded warriors and others who have suffered horrible disfigurement.

The other side of that coin is the amount of totally elective cosmetic surgery people have sought out to make themselves more attractive. At one end is the use of tools like Botox which I described in a posting called "BroTox". The other side is the use of implants and surgery to make breasts, buttocks and genitalia bigger, smaller or just different. I guess it is sexist on my part that I feel that men pursuing this are more narcissistic than women struggling to fit societies ideals. I find them both equally foolish, but I can understand the pressure on women much more than that on men.

It was just a coincidence that later yesterday evening I ran into another interesting item while reading Asimov's Guide to the Bible. During the second and third centuries BC, Hellenism was all the rage in Jerusalem. Those who wanted to be considered erudite and having a certain amount of status pursued and indulged in everything Greek. On of those things was Gymnasium. With a lower case "g" gymnasium in that part of High School that smelled of sweat and athletic energy. With the uppercase "G" Gymnasium was the social practice of working out, something that was done gymnós; meaning "naked". For the up and coming Jew this was a problem. Circumcision was a definite symbol that labeled you un-Greek.


Cosmetic surgery came to the rescue of pride and ego in the form of an operation to stitch on a false foreskin. For those who could not afford the surgery, there were false foreskins one could wear while gymnós.