I'm not going to deny one important feature of my trip to Iran. Learning of the Iranians' appetite for plastic surgery was a definite highlight and certainly sparked ideas for my own. Although I admit I feel I should be saying something more profound right now. It doesn't quite fit does it, the reflection upon a biological reunion and I'm assessing the likelihood of going under the knife. But profound in my world was having cosmetic surgery, namely a nose job. Until visiting Tehran I'd never been to a place where rhinoplasty was not only a commonality but also a commodity. I wish you could see it for yourself if you haven't already, it's rampant. What amazes me is how certain aspects within a country can be internally dominant yet virtually unknown on the international stage. We associate plastic surgery with Los Angeles not Tehran. I certainly hadn't heard of this phenomena nor did anyone I know.
Now having witnessed the enormity of it I don't understand why it's not a globally recognised feature of the country. Or is it simply that news relating to Iran is best suited to the subject of nuclear centrifuges. Maybe the black religious dress doesn't want to be seen side by side with a culture that is over-dosing on plastic enhancements because the image doesn't fit. But surely that makes interesting news doesn't it? The clash, the contradiction, this is what makes a story appealing. You can just see the headlines, 'the rise of the plastic hi-jab' or 'I swapped my hi-jab for a plastic version'. Not that they have plastic hi-jabs in Iran so apologies for that. Nonetheless there's no denying it's a contradiction to what we're led to believe of the culture. Perhaps it's the journalists who've not had the privilege to peer into all cor...
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...ing, it's going to look out of place and generally take up more space than it was designed for.
From an evolutionary perspective I was also interested to learn why the Iranian nose is a big one. I tried to research the reasons and ended up reading something about sand getting up the nostrils or whatnot. I didn't really get a sensible answer or suitable explanation so I gave up trying to understand. When I look around there are plenty of other cultures where the nose can be over proportioned to the face and overtly large yet they're not purchasing nose-job's like they are bread. What this all means I cannot conclude. There are probably some deep penetrating reasons or trends that led to what it is today. For now though I wasn't going to spend too much time trying to grapple with the underlying reasons, instead I would be saving my money to do what I'd always wanted.
In Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, Satrapi states that her goal in writing the book was to dispel many of the hasty generalizations made by the western world about Iran, a principal sentiment being that the country is little more than a nation founded by fundamentalists and home to terrorists and extremists. To combat the misconception, Satrapi enlists the assistance examples of barriers and dissent towards the new conservative regime in Iran from her adolescence. By employing events from her childhood in Iran Satrapi rattles the foundation of the myths and false beliefs assumed by the occident. Satrapi writes that the initial waves of conservative fundamentalism in Iran were met with unified national dissent. To support this claim she employs both personal and familial examples of dissent felt towards the emerging reactionary regime. Satrapi successfully challenges the stereotypes, but limits as to the extent to which she succeeds in doing so could be brought up. A limit one might place on the historical accuracy of her writing is that it cannot truly be taken as historically accurate as a first-person narrative from a child’s perspective, which although persuasive, is biased.
In today society, beauty in a woman seems to be the measured of her size, or the structure of her nose and lips. Plastic surgery has become a popular procedure for people, mostly for women, to fit in social class, race, or beauty. Most women are insecure about their body or face, wondering if they are perfect enough for the society to call the beautiful; this is when cosmetic surgery comes in. To fix what “needed” to be fixed. To begin with, there is no point in cutting your face or your body to add or remove something most people call ugly. “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery” explored the desire of human to become beyond perfection by the undergoing plastic surgery. The author, Camille Pagalia, took a look how now days how Americans are so obsessed
Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, is a story based on her own childhood in Iran. The story consists of the struggles her family and friends are forced to deal with, changing Marji’s view of Iranian life and its people. The book starts during a revolution, the Iranian people are trying to overthrow the emperor and when they finally do, war breaks out between Iraq and Iran. During the war thousands of people’s lives were taken, women, children and men of all ages. During this Marji’s parents forced her to leave Iran because they know it is too dangerous for a child of her age to live in the middle of a war so severe and life threatening. During the time Marji did live in Iran, she heard many tales about the umpteen conflicts and struggles that lower class people were faced with. Marji saw her maid whom she loved and cared for, not being able to date her love, their neighbor, because she was embedded in a different social class. She experienced the harsh realities of divergence between men and women. Women were compelled to wear a veil in order to not “distract” men with their hair. Younger boys in the lower end of the class system were given a “golden” key to take to war, which was actually plastic; this key meant that if they were killed fighting for what they believed in, it would guarantee their entrance to heaven. In Iran, there were a variety of ways in which the people of Iran can be distinguished between social classes. Your social class affected you in every way there was during this horrible time in Iran.
Traditions are one of the most important things to have in times of hardship, as evident by numerous examples both in Persepolis and the world at large. In an article published to NewsELA.com titled Some young Iranians ignore officially enforced anger at the West, Iranian teens are ignoring the Supreme Leader’s orders and continueing with old American traditions. So even in Iran today people are holding onto traditions through tough times as people have done for all of
In Visibly Muslim, Emma Tarlo discusses the visibility of ethnicity in a contemporary urban setting. Emma Tarlo asks ‘why and how all types of clothing that identify the people that wear them as Muslim are usually grouped together and perceived by people outside as monotone, retrograde and repressive,’ when, in fact, ‘far from promoting an image of dull uniformity, the headscarf is often the most self-consciously elaborated element of an outfit, that has in recent years beco...
The author of this essay thinks it is ridiculous that women cannot wear their hijab in certain places around the world. Many people think the hijab is not necessary. However, it is part of what Muslim women believe. She explains in her essay, "So next time you hear about a hijab ban think about your best pair of jeans or your faded t-shirt with the logo of your favorite band" (Fakhraie 461). A hijab is just like every other piece of clothing that covers up the body. It can be part of their religion, or they can wear a hijab just because they like how it
Plastic surgery is one of the most growing fields in medicine. Reconstructive surgery is one of the branches from plastic surgery and it is defined as surgeries performed to restore facial and body defects caused by a disease, trauma, burns, or birth defects (Nelson, 2010). When it first started, it focused on helping people who are having difficulty blending in society. For instance, during the Renaissance era, in the late 1700s, doctors worked on enhancing the appearance of patients suffering from the nose deformation caused by syphilis using plastic surgery. Enabling them to blend in society and cover the disease. Also, after World War I, because there were a large number of soldiers with disfiguring injuries, the United States of America relied on plastic surgeries to improve the life of wounded soldiers (Nelson, 2010). The other branch of plastic surgery is cosmetic surgery. This type of surgery is performed to preserve or restore normal appearances, or to enhance it beyond the average level (American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, 2014). For the last couple of years, Plastic surgery marketing has focused massively on cosmetic surgery procedures rather than reconstructive ones. This type of advertising is having negative effects on society by increasing the number of needless procedures, changing the true meaning of beauty, and harming females’ self-esteem.
2007 "The Politics and Hermeneutics of Hijab in Iran: From Confinement to Choice." In Muslim World Journal of Human Rights 4.1
“Individuals are encouraged, even expected to make ‘lifestyle’ choices to maximize their life chance and simultaneously held responsible for managing and minimizing the risk associated with these decisions” (Leve, 2012:124). Media discourse is part of everyone’s day to day life, ideals of bodies are shown in all these media communication’s in order to appeal to the consumer. This could be considered to have made society become obsessed by looks, meaning that individuals feel the pressures to keep up with how people are represented in the media, for example recognized celebrities in magazines. According to The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, or BAAPS, there was a 16.5 percent increase of procedures in 2012. These statistics show that cosmetic surgery is becoming normalized, “This is how we live now. Anything that makes us feel better about our appearance, whether it involves needles, knives or acid, is acceptable’ (Wiseman, 2012)
The religion of Islam was imposed upon Iranians, whether they liked it or not. Marjane and her classmates “...didn’t like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to”(Satrapi 3). The young girls were against wearing the veil because they were not practicing
In the article, “Cosmetic Surgery, Suspect Norms, and the Ethics of Complicity” written by Margaret Olivia Little, a case was mentioned about a young boy who has ears that stick out who continuously is being teases in the extent that it taunts the young boy at night and affects his grades in school. The parents want to result in cosmetic surgery to tuck the young boy’s ears in closer to his head. As some may argue that not all cosmetic surgery is made to enhance physical attributes but to actually help someone to stop real life suffering and trauma. Although that argument has valid points, there is a major error in it. Something that is not often thought of is the image that society considers as “normal”. In response to this case Little states, “society surely deserve blame for at least some of the boy’s suffering-not because society has preferences or norms about appearance but because it is immoral in its “enforcement of those norms”. Yes, the deciding to undergo surgery to help the boy live a life without torment from those around him can help prevent mental trauma, however, it is those who set the preconceived image or what is “normal”. Little also mentions that cosmetic surgeries are all revolved around altering their image it look more European. If the Marjory of people want to alter their looks to look a bit more European, it
The reformation of the country of Iran toward Islam caused turmoil among the people because the drastic changes forced on the people were not easily accepted. One of the major changes is that women were forced to wear veils as a religious requirement. A change in government toward a religion is difficult to overcome because not everyone agrees on the changes and many people want to keep things the way they are. This change to Islam is difficult for Marjane and the other children as she explains “We didn’t really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to” (3). Marjane’s family serves as an example that there are families in Iran who do not strictly follow the Islamic religion and do not understand why they are being forced to follow the government mandated rules. Although many people did not believe the government’s proposition that women’s hair excites men, they still had to wear the veil to live safely. Marjane claims, “I think that the reason we were so rebellious was that our generation had known secular schools” (98). Constantly struggling to make the transition to the religious schools was difficult for the children of Iran because they had already be...
Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, makes important strides toward altering how Western audiences perceive Iranian women. Satrapi endeavors to display the intersection of the lives of some Westerners with her life as an Iranian, who spent some time in the West. Satrapi, dissatisfied with representations she saw of Iranian women in France, decided to challenge them. In her words, “From the time I came to France in 1994, I was always telling stories about life in Iran to my friends. We’d see pieces about Iran on television, but they didn’t represent my experience at all. I had to keep saying, ‘No, it’s not like that there.’ I’ve been justifying why it isn’t negative to be an Iranian for almost twenty years. How strange when it isn’t something I did or chose to be?” (Satrapi, “Why I Wrote Persepolis” 10). In acknowledging both Eastern and Western feminism, Satrapi’s novel humanizes the female Iranian perspective in a way that can easily digested by Western audiences.
To begin with, the hijab is uncomfortable and impractical in today's modern society. The hijab causes more problems than it solves. Many people either are scared of someone wearing it or they hate the person wearing it. It is very difficult to
According to The New Yorker, South Korea has the highest rate of plastic surgery per capita in the world (Chung, 2015). Seoul, South Korea is described as the World’s plastic-surgery capital. Many people who receive plastic surgery base their desired looks on Anime characters. Their looks in South Korea matter more then their inner aspects such as personality.