In November 2009, Heidi Montag, at just 23 years old, went under the knife to have a drastic 10 cosmetic procedures done in one day. In early 2010, People magazine honored this transformation with a spread in one of their issues. Heidi was and is "obsessed with being perfect", and made herself almost unrecognizable. Elective cosmetic surgery is a practice designed solely for the purpose of achieving the hegemony standards of beauty. The choices women make in regards to these surgeries are based off of hegemonic cultural norms. These surgeries facilitate the urge to be physically "normal". So, what does this incidence say to young American women who look at the "before" Heidi and see a body they perceive as better than normal? It simply emphasizes the hegemonic ideal for beauty as artificial. It pushes society to ask ourselves "if she needed 10 cosmetic alterations done, then how many do I need?" As celebrities continue to go through with these unnecessary procedures, the bar for beauty is set higher and higher. And unfortunately, we will only continue to hear of more cosmetic surgery tragedies in the future.
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