The Face Of Plastic Surgery Recovery

What's the price of being beautiful? How much pain would we undergo to feel pretty? Nose jobs alone (which are the second most popular of procedures after breast augmentation) cost an average of $5,046 dollars and involve cutting the skin and flipping it upside down, then breaking the nasal bones with a chisel similar to the ones used to carve on stone, before scratching on it with a tool that looks like a cheese slicer....They also involve from two to four weeks of bruises, soreness and tortuous recovery. Undoubtedly we'd reach the edges of discomfort, to say the least, in order to achieve a beauty ideal.

According to the annual plastic surgery procedural statistics, there were 15.9 million surgical and minimally invasive cosmetic procedures performed just in the United States during 2015, of which more than 236,000 were performed on patients ages 13 to 19. 

South Korea is the leading country in cosmetic surgery. People from all over the world travel there to get their faces and bodies done. And no question why — the quality of the work the surgeons have is unbelievable (here an example). One in every five women of this country have undergone the knife. Photographer Ji Yeo lived with many of these women, driving them to their appointments, cooking for them, and getting them medicines in return for intimate and honest portraits of their recovery. Her final work is called Beauty Recovery Room and is certainly worth watching.

I personally believe our bodies are like the house we are sentenced to live in for the rest of our lives, and if there's something in this house that drives us mad — a window, a counter, a door — and we have the possibility of changing it to our liking, then I don't see why not to. However, it would take a great amount of determination (low self esteem? self hatred? need of approval?) to go through the pre-operative fear and, far worst, the post-surgical suffering.