COSMETIC SEX-APPEAL SURGERY AND WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT OUR CULTURE

As a farmer, I got to know several farm families and admired what I saw. Their children were an integral part of the family. Each had their own chores and duties. Without them, the farm couldn’t function. Besides, they learned the value of work, money, and interpersonal responsibility.

They also had dreams, but these were often related to their work – how they could improve what they were doing and make a little extra money. As a result, they seemed to dream less about their appearance and popularity. They were a family unit and had their place.

We all dream, but youth, lacking these very defining experiences, tend to dream more of other things, like peer approval. An article entitled “Bod Mod Fad: Why All the plastic Surgery on Girl’s Sex Organs?” revealed that:

·       In 2014, nearly 64,000 teens opted in, and so, by proxy, did their parents, whose consent is required. Cosmetic surgeries on adolescents include rhinoplasty, otoplasty (ears), liposuction, breast augmentation or reduction for girls, breast reduction for boys.

I am not familiar with some of these terms either, but they are becoming the craze:

·       Earlier this year, Time magazine reported a sharp uptick in genital plastic surgery on girls under age eighteen.

It gets worse:

·       In the U.K., 156 girls under age fifteen had labiaplasty surgery in 2015-2016.

There are many reasons offered for the increasing demand for “sex-appeal surgery.” However, one prominent reason is that sexuality and popularity have achieved a greater importance, even among parents who want the best for their children.

But what represents the best? Certainly, it isn’t the home-spun values learned on the farm. Instead of familially defined values, we have become seduced by values socially defined by the peer group, social media, Hollywood, and even our schools. As a result, this shift in values exalts now self-satisfaction, self-attainment, self-trust, resulting in self-obsession.

Rather than freeing the youth to enjoy themselves, the new values are self-focused leading to stress and depression.

I am not saying that we need to return to the farm or even to rebuild community as many are trying to do today. These pursuits are also ultimately self-focused. The bottom line is, “What can I get out of this to make me feel better about myself?”

If we start buttoning our shirt at the wrong button, every subsequent button will be out-of-place. Instead, we have to return to the initial button. What is this button? The very thing we have rejected but have been designed to do – to having a loving and sustaining relationship with our Creator by trusting in His mercy. Jesus had promised to give us rest and peace:

·       “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Strangely, we find rest and freedom in serving Him and in knowing His love for us, a love that frees us from our dependency upon the opinions and appetites of others, as an object for sexual consumption.