Kids Under the Knife: Can Cosmetic Surgery Stop Bullying?
Stephanie Smith, the mother of six-year old who was about to kindergarten wrote to cosmetic surgeon Dr. Joe Niamtu in a panic. Her daughter Olivia had quit ballet because when she wore her hair in the mandatory bun the other kids laughed at her and pointed at her ears. "Last night she came to me crying asking me, 'Why are my ears like this? I don't like them Mommy…'" she wrote. "I'm so scared about my daughter starting school in September. Some of the bullies she encountered at her ballet class will be there too. I won't be there to protect her. I just fear the emotional scars that this is going to cause." Smith's medical insurance was mediocre and she couldn't afford to pay for otoplasty-surgery to pin back prominent ears-out of pocket. Niamtu, who tells Yahoo Shine that about 25 percent of his work on kids is performed pro bono, offered to do it for free. "No one deserves to be made fun of for physical attributes they can't control," he says. Now the young girl is back at ballet.
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In the last decade, the rate of plastic surgery for children has gone up by about 30 percent, spurred, in part, by the increase in society's acceptance of cosmetic procedures as well as parents' fear of bullying. According to Niamtu, the most common procedures are otoplasty, mole, birthmark, and scar removal, and, to a lesser extent, correcting nasal deformities and breast reduction (for older teen girls). He's operated on children as young as one year to remove a mole and recommends performing otoplasty before kids start elementary school, since that's when the teasing usually begins. He points out that "children have no social filter" and will comment on anything that draws their attention. "There have been studies that show that when children have these deformities or situations that draw criticism to a body feature, it can affect self esteem and body image. It can impact them for the rest of their lives."
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Another mother, Katherine Elliott, brought her six-year-old to Dr. Niamtu to remove a dime-sized dark mole her chin. "That's the first thing people saw-the very first thing people saw," Elliot told WRIC. "They didn't see her; they saw a big brown mole on her face. She's had it since she was six months old, and it just got darker and darker." After surgery, the little girl was left with a pink spot that should disappear completely.
While cosmetic surgery may put a stop to some teasing, Dr. Karen Ruskin, a family therapist and parenting expert tells Yahoo Shine it sends the wrong message to children and may launch them on a path of pleasing others that won't be healthy as they grow up. "What somebody else says or does says everything about them and nothing about you-if you change for them, you are living for others instead of loving yourself." While she acknowledges that there are some exceptional circumstances in which cosmetic surgery might be necessary, she'd prefer that parents celebrate their children's physical quirks and help them develop coping mechanisms. "They have big ears? Say, 'Look at how cute they are!'" She adds that throughout life, there are always people who will tease, bully or criticize, and they only thing we have control over is our own reaction. "How you cope will get you to a better place."
Niamtu agrees that cosmetic surgery is not always the answer and that some parents try to push a procedure on kids who may not need it or who may not care about changing the feature themselves. "If a child isn't getting bugged, let's wait and see how things go. Good cosmetic surgeons say no frequently," he says. In Kendall's case, Elliot says she "firmly believes that when [her daughter] gets older, she'll look back on this and say, 'Thank you.'"
Still, Ruskin is concerned about the broader implications of the uptick in plastic surgery for kids. "We're becoming an airbrushed culture," she says, a society where its no longer acceptable to look natural.
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