Britain, Guard Your Daughters!

While men have become increasingly involved in plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures as they get older, women seem to have developed a reverse trend. Younger girls are increasingly desiring cosmetic surgery, especially in Britain where the cosmetic surgery market is booming.

According to a study conducted by Girlguilding UK, British girls as young as 10 are thinking about plastic surgery and are concerned with dieting. Many report feeling depressed because of their looks and wish to look older and garner sexual advances from boys. An increasing amount of young girls are getting their cues from teen fashion magazines.

One girl surveyed says, "When I was 11 I read a teenage magazine for the first time and that is when it kind of clicked, 'I should be like this'."

Emma Hughes, a 15 year-old girl from Britain reports wanting to have plastic surgery to be more like her idol, English fashion model, Jordan (Katie Price). Jordan has had extensive plastic surgery and has recently undertaken a "mommy makeover" and vaginal rejuvenation.

Emma's mother supports her daughter in her dream, not only in spirit, but also by working five jobs to pay for Emma's beauty treatments, tanning, and future cosmetic enhancements. Emma reports that she wants breast augmentation for enlargement, despite that she is already a 34F and her mother has already spent £15,000 on her daughter's spa treatments. Emma's too young to join a tanning salon, so her mother purchased a tanning bed for use in their home.

“I’m not worried about this tanorexia nonsense, or skin cancer from sunbeds. It hasn’t affected her health. It’s making her confident and beautiful. All the treatments will give her the edge. They’re going to help her be a star,” says Ashley Hughes, Emma's mother.

Although SFP is considered a pro-surgery site by some, we are, in actuality, a pro-patient site. We advocate making educated and mature decisions, and we feel that it's impossible to make a mature decision when your not mature yourself. It has been observed time and again, that young people have a very shaky grasp on the ramifications of their present actions on their future. While Emma may feel confident now, she may see that self-esteem plummet later if she or her mother are unable to maintain their extravagant spending. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of Emma's story is that her mother not only condones her daughters shallow behavior, but actively supports it. Not to mention the fact that neither of them are concerned with the possibility of Emma developing skin cancer from tanning - sun damage can be difficult to see, as it can occur at the deepest levels of skin.

Britain, it's time to open a dialog with your daughters. Not everything you see on TV, or movies, or magazines is appropriate behavior.