Despite Nip/Tuck’s finale this week, there’s a new way to get your much-needed plastic-surgery-fix. (cough, hack, gag). The iSurgeon App brings plastic surgery to your fingertips—letting you test out what you (or your friends or the featured models) would look like after going under the knife. The iPhone application lets you modify (read: distort) your own photos with the swipe of a finger until you’re completely satisfied (or your image is so mangled that you can’t make out what it is anymore). By evaluating how closely you replicate the “perfect bod,” this game embodies pretty much everything that’s wrong with our heavily PhotoShopped media.
The application, recently launched by plastic surgeon, Dr. Salzhauer, is a poorly developed, elementary photo-editing program. But more offensive than its technology, is its message. It basically turns self-depreciation into a game. Something along the lines of: fix all your imperfections to match America’s [impossible] standards of beauty and you’ll win!
I’d argue, that in this scenario, no one wins. Encouraging the need for tummy tucks, nose jobs and breast augmentations, even if just for fun, is bound to make women even more critical of themselves, evaluating their self-worth with even more scrutiny and harsher judgments than they did before.
I strongly believe that, in our highly image-based society, we’re already pressured enough to be perfect. The media and fashion industries flaunt super-thin models that are airbrushed and photo-edited to (debatable) perfection. And now we’re following trend by airbrushing ourselves!? I definitely reject anything that suggests no matter how confident you may be with your appearance, a more-perfect version can always exist. But hey, you don’t honestly believe you’d look better without a little nip/tuck yourself, do you?
Major yuck. I vote you download it, delete it, and report it as offensive.
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