Aesthetic Needs as the Motivation in Doing Plastic Surgery
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for land” Donahue 15. In her logic as a child, Hope associates happiness in her family with her mother’s beauty, as described below.
As a child, my mother’s beauty shone like a beacon of hope to me, absolving her of all fault. Once, looking through boxes in my
grandmother’s basement, I came across an old 1960s Harlequin romance upon which was sketched, I was sure, a picture of my mother: a swooning
beauty with round blue eyes, pert nose, shapely mouth, and long hair the color of butter. When my father called her “Hey Gorgeous,” I knew all
was well in our house Donahue 21.
In turn, Hope’s mother develops Hope’s obsession by teaching her to focus on beauty. Since Hope was a child, she never teaches Hope anything else except
how to become beautiful. Hope’s mother gives example by wearing “a shockingly bright, bare jumpsuit, halter-backed, of vivid magenta silk” which “barely covered
her breasts, clearly braless beneath the thin fabric”, telling Hope that “A girl has to compete around here to make a splash, you know” Donahue 40. She tells
Hope to lie in the sun so she “wouldn’t be so pasty” Donahue 52. She never tells Hope she is beautiful when they are alone, but she brags about Hope’s beauty in
public. In stores when I’d try on clothes my mother perched herself by the mirror
outside the dressing room and insisted that I come out and twirl around. “Look at my beautiful daughter” she’d exclaim to salesclerks, her
effervescent praise uncorked by an audience Donahue 70.
Hope’s mother’s behavior seems as if she is only proud of Hope because of her beauty, not her other characteristics, her intelligence, or Hope herself as an
individual, and as if beauty is the most worthy asset to show to other people. By behaving like that, Hope’s mother stresses the importance of beauty on Hope’s
mind from an early age. Hope’s mother’s demands make Hope feel even more pressure to be beautiful, as shown in her statement, “My mother’s desire for me to
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be glamorous, stunning, and charming—to dazzle my father’s family—added to the pressure I already heaped upon myself. It took an enormous amount of time
and effort to make myself beautiful, about two and a half hours of preparation” Donahue 120.
One of Hope’s childhood friends also develops Hope’s obsession with beauty. As a child, Hope only has one best friend named Alisa. They perform
makeovers by sketching pictures of ugly women and altering the pictures into beautiful women based on Hope’s directions. Hope says they are not interested in
Barbie dolls, whose faces are already pre-made beautifully, because “we needed to create what we wanted from scratch” Donahue 34. Even as children, their
game already stresses the importance on beauty and shows Hope’s desire to improve beauty as much as she can.
Alisa was a talented artist. We entertained ourselves by doing what we called makeovers. Alisa would sketch some hapless imaginary woman,
unattractive in the extreme, with bulbous nose, witchy chin hairs, a moppish mane of hair. It was my job to dictate to Alisa which of the
sketched woman’s features could be improved and how, and Alisa then resketched the result according to my critique Donahue 34.
As a result, after she grows up to be an adult, Hope becomes obsessed about being beautiful. She regards beauty as the main necessity in her life, as
shown in her statement, “I was, perhaps, even more naïve than my mother in thinking that a pretty face was all I really needed in life” Donahue 36. She
checks herself in the mirror very often, admitting that “It’s ridiculous, compulsive, how many times a day I look at myself” Donahue 35. Because she pays so much
attention to her face, inevitably, she starts to find imperfections on her face. She becomes less satisfied about her appearance and more obsessed to change it so
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that she becomes beautiful. When her boyfriend says that they both have wide noses, his comment “devastated” her Donahue 28. She often stares at her face
and thinks about what part she wants to change, just like in the childhood game she used to play, until “this festering thought turned into full-blown obsession”
Donahue 28. She spends much time thinking about it, so she grows more and more comfortable with her obsession to become beautiful, as shown in the
quotations below. Innocently enough, I’ll think, What if I had bigger lips? I’ll think about
this for a while, play with the idea. And then something shifts, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly, and what was once just a thought slips into
obsession. What if I had bigger lips and a smaller nose? I would be stunning, that’s what. Or at least closer to stunning Donahue 154.
Sometimes, it is true, I do think I am attractive. It is what I always hope for. More often, though, my eye asserts itself upon some flaw, however
small. And the most ironic thing is that those rare times when I do find myself lovely, I am overcome with despair. I look at the bounty of my face
and see the fruitless waste of my life, my potential. So much effort focused on so unrewarding a cause. It is much more comfortable and reassuring to
see myself as flawed, a work in progress Donahue 35.
Therefore, aesthetic needs form a part of Hope Donahue’s motivation in doing plastic surgery. It motivates Hope Donahue to do plastic surgery in order to
attain perfect beauty. Beginning with the seeds of dissatisfaction with her appearance described above combined with her abundant money, Hope starts to
do plastic surgery. She believes that if she fixes every imperfection or irregularity on her face through plastic surgery, such as the little bump in her nose or her thin
lips, her beauty will be perfect and she will have a better self-image, as described in the quotations below.
I’ll feel fine after I have the tip of my nose fixed. The reason I’m so anxious and depressed and stuck is because I can’t stand that little bump in
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my nose. Did I believe it? Not fully, no, but it didn’t matter whether I believed it or not. Just as my concerns focused on the physical, the outside
of myself, so, too, I kept my thoughts about my motives carefully shallow as well Donahue 101.
While I had always pined for bigger lips, the cheekbone part was entirely random and impulsive. It was a matter of looking at my features and
deciding what remained to be improved upon. I figured that if I was going to undergo the physical and emotional trauma of surgery, I might as well
get more bang for my buck. At five thousand dollars, cheek implants were a pricey impulse. But I had acquired two more Visa cards, and I was as
good at telling myself that I would never run out of money as I was at believing I was on a path toward something significant, that the surgeries
were moving me closer to happiness Donahue 93-94.
This condition is supported by Hope’s statement, “The only way I knew to change how I felt about myself was to change my appearance” Donahue 251.
After the surgery, she feels very happy seeing the doctor’s reaction about her new beauty, as shown in her statement, “Beautiful, he thinks I‘m beautiful. I close my
eyes, trying to recapture the feeling of ecstatic surrender, a feeling so fleeting, so quickly departed” Donahue 12. Thus, Hope does one plastic surgery after
another, and she finally becomes obsessed and addicted to plastic surgery. After the initial thought, as I said, obsession begins to take over.
Something changes, and it’s no longer that I just want to have this surgery, but that I must do it. I am compelled to go through with it. It becomes a
personal mission, a test of my resolve. I must fix this flaw, or improve this feature, because once discovered, it will haunt and disturb me until I do. ...
Caught up in the thought of a newer, better me, all my other worries are conveniently eclipsed Donahue 155-156.
As described in the quotation above, for Hope, improving her beauty through plastic surgery becomes no longer an interest or a choice, but an urgent necessity.
If she does not do it, she feels haunted and cannot continue her life.
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