
Whether you’re in Beverly Hills or Marina Del Rey, CA, you’re just blocks away from a plastic surgeon willing to do an overhaul on your post-pregnancy body. Touted as the “Mom Job,” this plastic surgery trio includes a tummy tuck, a breast lift and liposuction. Costing anywhere between $10,000-$30,000, the mom job offers women who have just given birth, a chance to do another overhaul on their bodies. This package deal reminds me of a search on Expedia.com where all you may want is a flight, but they want you to package it with a rental car and a hotel room. But this is someone's body and life, not simply their travel plans.
The article in The New York Times, “Is the Mom Job Really Necessary,” weighs in on this latest phenomenon stating that the “mom job” sets “unforgiving standards” and,
“…treats biological changes as if they were as optional as hair color. Gossip magazines excoriate celebrity moms who don’t immediately lose their “baby weight.” Even Cookie, a luxury parenting magazine, recently ran an article that described post-pregnancy breasts as “the ultimate indignity” and promoted implant surgery; a photo of droopy water-filled balloons accompanied the article.”
The author of the article, Natasha Singer, also opposes the “mommy makeover” stating it, “…seeks to pathologize the postpartum body, characterizing pregnancy and childbirth as maladies with disfiguring aftereffects that can be repaired with the help of scalpels and cannulae.”
I agree with Singer. Women are fully aware of the procedures at their fingertips when it comes to opting for plastic surgery. The doctors offering a package deal on “mom jobs” are playing on womens' insecurity and desires to get back into shape after having just performed the greatest miracle in life, childbirth. Why does the industry feel the need to take aim at vulnerable new moms who want to look and feel like their old selves again? Making money off of a woman’s station in life matters more than revering her for who she is and what she continues to become. The “mom job” takes the typical targeting of women when it comes to beauty and anti-aging way too far. And is a “dad job” soon to follow which will include liposuction of the gut, hair implants and pectoral implants? Plastic surgeons need to have more confidence in their practice that people seeking their services will find them. Shameless marketing and targeting such as this is downright despicable.
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