Issue: Plastic fantastic?

6th Feb 2010

The Hills star Heidi Mon­tag caused con­tro­versy last week after reveal­ing her new face and fig­ure on US tele­vi­sion. The twenty three year old under­went a stag­ger­ing ten cos­metic pro­ce­dures in a sin­gle day to become, in her own words, ‘a new person’.

Sta­tis­tics from the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Aes­thetic Plas­tic Surgery show that Heidi is not alone in opt­ing to go under the knife, with pro­ce­dures on under 18s dou­bling in the past decade.

Face lifts were once a tool for the rich and famous to help roll back the clock but now young women are tak­ing pre-emptive action against aging with 15 per­cent of Botox injec­tions being given to those under the age of 35. Simon Cow­ell (no stranger to a bit of Botox him­self) recently stated his sur­prise that Cheryl Cole’s fore­head wrin­kled when she frowned, pro­vid­ing a per­fect exam­ple of the enter­tain­ment industry’s blasé atti­tude toward cos­metic surgery.

How­ever, even the Geordie beauty seems to have suc­cumbed to the lure of such pro­ce­dures with pic­tures sur­fac­ing this week of her sport­ing a sus­pi­ciously bee-stung pout.

In a soci­ety which thrives on pro­grammes enti­tled ‘I Want a Famous Face’, Heidi’s actions are just a height­ened inci­dent of what is becom­ing commonplace.

Liken­ing her new look (which includes but­tock aug­men­ta­tion, chin reduc­tion and lipo­suc­tion on waist, hips and thighs) to chang­ing the colour of her nail pol­ish, Montag’s atti­tude is in denial of the poten­tially dan­ger­ous and irrepara­ble dam­age surgery can cause. Whilst the British Asso­ci­a­tion for Aes­thetic Plas­tic Sur­geons has stricter reg­u­la­tions than their US coun­ter­parts, there are still wor­ry­ing loop­holes – Did you know that sur­geons can legally use untested prod­ucts within a surgery?

Montag’s tele­vi­sion inter­view was painful to watch, with the fresh faced, pony-tailed girl from sea­son one of The Hills seem­ing almost unrecog­nis­able. Wor­ry­ingly, she claimed her ‘main mes­sage is that beauty’s really within’, beg­ging the ques­tion of why she would sub­ject her­self to such rad­i­cal action? Is media pres­sure a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to her deci­sion? A recent sur­vey by Girl Guid­ing UK revealed that 24 per­cent of girls between the ages of 16–21 would strongly con­sider surgery sug­gest­ing that the ‘air­brush cul­ture’ of the enter­tain­ment world is fil­ter­ing into every day life.

When Mon­tag was asked wouldn’t she rather look like her­self than a Bar­bie doll a smile almost broke through the plastic-y sheen of her new face as she claimed she would love there to be a ‘Heidi doll’ some­day. In real­ity, her actions seem to be trans­form­ing her into a real life Bar­bie doll but I for one can’t help think­ing the Heidi who bounced onto our screens in 2006 was a much more beau­ti­ful, and real, person.

Writ­ten by Ellen Fitzpatrick