If someone advised you against plastic surgery once... Unless you have a real body dysmorphic disorder or mistakenly think that being handsome will completely and instantly fix everything in your life, he is not your true friend. He doesn't really want you to get better, to be better, to feel better. He prefers you to remain at your assigned bottom rung on the social ladder, so that he can feel better about himself. His self-interested process of thought is unconscious.
Humans are evolved apes. For millions of years, your status in the ape group determined your chances of survival. Apes with very low status were always denied females, often denied food and, sometimes, simply whacked for being a useless drain on the group (Yuval Noah Harari mentions numerous cases of violent eugenics in primitive hunter-gatherer societies in his book Sapiens). This status was not yet linked to diplomas or money. It was solely linked to physical health and strength. This fear of being at the bottom remained embedded in our limbic systems.
For instance, if you heard your psychiatrist say something like "surgery usually does not help patients get better" once, then the blackpill is that he doesn't actually know shit about this. There is no reliable study that indicates plastic surgery can't help mental patients feel at least slightly better about themselves. This is just a BS line popular in psych circles without the slightest shred of good evidence to back it (except perhaps that in many cases, PS comes far too late in a depressed person's life to help. PS should be ideally done as a teenager).
Intuition and existing evidence both point very strongly to the fact that it helps, it must help. If looks didn't matter a tiny bit in happiness and self-esteem, women wouldn't spend hours a week trying new cosmetics and hair brushings in front of a mirror. People wouldn't be terrified of going to work with a very bad haircut. This so-called psychiatrist just wants you to remain at your assigned place and try to become happy as a low-value person.
Plastic surgery is a new and scary thing. It developed mostly during the last two world wars, and it has been available to the general public for only a couple of decades. Before plastic surgery, you couldn't hope to ascend in looks, and this stability, this immutability was reassuring to many people. A "plain Jane" was condemned to die a plain Jane. You couldn't change, whether you wanted it or not, so you might as well have accepted it, and slept soundly at night on this very reassuring thought. Many an ancient slave has slept soundly at night telling himself: "whatever I do, I can't escape my condition."
There was a time when people thought lordship was directly derived from God. The desire to overthrow a ruler was thus doubly condemned, both as a legal fault and a moral fault. By the same logic, beauty was a special gift from God, and it was not to be envied or coveted.
People have never liked those who have escaped their lot, escaped fate, ascended despite all ods; those who said "no". It makes people uncomfortable, because it interrogates them on their laziness and self-complacency. There's always been jealousy towards the bourgeois and the nouveau riche, the rogue and the arriviste, the bastard-king and the conqueror, the revolutionary and the freed slave... Jealousy for the annoying fucker who didn't accept the random roll of dice everyone else accepted and actually fought to better this condition.
You probably don't have BDD or an irrational neurosis. These cases are statistically insignificant. You are right to feel that plastic surgery could improve the quality of your social life and reduce your overall levels of self-consciousnes, and you are right to covet plastic surgery. The instincts that make you ashamed of your body are the result of millions of years of biological evolution.
PPS: if governments in the West really wanted to fix mental health problems, fully and from the ground up, they would give free PS to every ugly teenager before his looks damage his mental health. That would be around the age of 15.
Humans are evolved apes. For millions of years, your status in the ape group determined your chances of survival. Apes with very low status were always denied females, often denied food and, sometimes, simply whacked for being a useless drain on the group (Yuval Noah Harari mentions numerous cases of violent eugenics in primitive hunter-gatherer societies in his book Sapiens). This status was not yet linked to diplomas or money. It was solely linked to physical health and strength. This fear of being at the bottom remained embedded in our limbic systems.
For instance, if you heard your psychiatrist say something like "surgery usually does not help patients get better" once, then the blackpill is that he doesn't actually know shit about this. There is no reliable study that indicates plastic surgery can't help mental patients feel at least slightly better about themselves. This is just a BS line popular in psych circles without the slightest shred of good evidence to back it (except perhaps that in many cases, PS comes far too late in a depressed person's life to help. PS should be ideally done as a teenager).
Intuition and existing evidence both point very strongly to the fact that it helps, it must help. If looks didn't matter a tiny bit in happiness and self-esteem, women wouldn't spend hours a week trying new cosmetics and hair brushings in front of a mirror. People wouldn't be terrified of going to work with a very bad haircut. This so-called psychiatrist just wants you to remain at your assigned place and try to become happy as a low-value person.
Plastic surgery is a new and scary thing. It developed mostly during the last two world wars, and it has been available to the general public for only a couple of decades. Before plastic surgery, you couldn't hope to ascend in looks, and this stability, this immutability was reassuring to many people. A "plain Jane" was condemned to die a plain Jane. You couldn't change, whether you wanted it or not, so you might as well have accepted it, and slept soundly at night on this very reassuring thought. Many an ancient slave has slept soundly at night telling himself: "whatever I do, I can't escape my condition."
There was a time when people thought lordship was directly derived from God. The desire to overthrow a ruler was thus doubly condemned, both as a legal fault and a moral fault. By the same logic, beauty was a special gift from God, and it was not to be envied or coveted.
People have never liked those who have escaped their lot, escaped fate, ascended despite all ods; those who said "no". It makes people uncomfortable, because it interrogates them on their laziness and self-complacency. There's always been jealousy towards the bourgeois and the nouveau riche, the rogue and the arriviste, the bastard-king and the conqueror, the revolutionary and the freed slave... Jealousy for the annoying fucker who didn't accept the random roll of dice everyone else accepted and actually fought to better this condition.
You probably don't have BDD or an irrational neurosis. These cases are statistically insignificant. You are right to feel that plastic surgery could improve the quality of your social life and reduce your overall levels of self-consciousnes, and you are right to covet plastic surgery. The instincts that make you ashamed of your body are the result of millions of years of biological evolution.
PPS: if governments in the West really wanted to fix mental health problems, fully and from the ground up, they would give free PS to every ugly teenager before his looks damage his mental health. That would be around the age of 15.
