Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Bad Message Overall...

My attention was recently drawn to a book titled My Beautiful Mommy. The synopsis:

"My Beautiful Mommy” is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: “You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn’t fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better.” Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

The book doesn’t explain exactly why the mother is redoing her nose post-pregnancy. Nonetheless, Mom reassures her little girl that the new nose won’t just look “different, my dear—prettier!”


Dr. Michael Salzhauer
, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Bal Harbour, Fla. says he got the idea for the book after seeing his patients bring their small children with them to appointments. "Parents generally tend to go into this denial thing. They just try to ignore the kids' questions completely." He is concerned that children "fill in the blanks in their imagination" and worry when they see "mommy with bandages".

So what is the message here?
1. don't worry kids Mom will be fine after her operation- ok, that's fair, but unfortunately you can not separate it from point number two.
2. Mom wasn't happy with her appearance and felt she needed to change it. Women need to look pretty.

I guess since we can't stop people from feeling they need to surgically enhance themselves, we can't condone a book that is just trying to ease the inevitable questions that follow...?

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