psocoptera

So this bullied 14-year-old was given $40000 worth of plastic surgery by a charitable foundation and one could say all sorts of things about our cultural priorities and conformity and indeed that article says some of them, but damn, all I can think looking at this picture is how way much better she looked to me before the surgery.

Obviously Nadia Ilse's face belongs just to her, and it's up to her (and her parents, as she's a minor, and the medical service providers doing the work) what she does with it, she certainly doesn't owe it to *me* to look one way or the other. But, dang. A year of college tuition, to take everything interesting about her face and try to make it as generic as possible? And end up looking... *wrong* around the eyes somehow, although admittedly that might be the terrible eyebrows, which she could presumably grow out again.

So this makes me wonder... what if I did find the "improved" version more attractive? Would I still find conformity to the beauty standard so distasteful, if the beauty standard were somehow magically more aligned with my own aesthetic opinions? Hrm.