Does Plastic Surgery Improve Self-Esteem?

When it comes to the way we look, everyone has insecurities. It is extremely rare if someone doesn’t. Whether we dislike our noses, the pudgy stomach, or the way our ears stick out, you’d be lying if you say you haven’t been curious about whether or not if it only looked a certain way would you feel better about yourself.

With advances in surgical technology and years to perfect procedures, plastic surgery is a viable option for a lot of people looking to enhance the way that they look. But can plastic surgery really improve one’s self-esteem? Let’s find out.

Defining Self-Esteem

In order to answer this question, we need to understand what exactly self-esteem is. Self-esteem is your subjective evaluation of your own personal worth. No one else can determine how you feel about yourself and, unfortunately, how we feel about ourselves is often a distortion of reality, which can cause low self-esteem.

Causes of Low Self-Esteem

Where does low self-esteem originate? There are a lot of factors that can contribute to low self-esteem. This is especially true for major influences when we’re young. This includes disapproving authority figures, uninvolved caregivers, bullying, academic challenges, trauma, the media, and even belief systems such as religion. As you can see, there is no one true cause of low self-esteem, but rather a collection of them.

Our childhoods impact the way we live our lives as adults so much more than we might think. After all, when you are not taught how to truly love and feel good about yourself when you are young, how can you expect to do the same when you are an adult. Like any other skill in life, it takes practice in order to love yourself and have good self-esteem.

The Media and Self-Esteem

When it comes to your body and self-image, the media can have a significant impact on how people think they should look. It can probably be argued that the media has been one of the leading contributors to lowered self-esteem, especially in the digital age when we’re constantly surrounded by images of beautiful people through social media.

While this impacts how both men and women feel about themselves and their appearance, it is especially true for young girls. From a young age, they are constantly told by advertisements and social media how they should look, and when puberty hits and their bodies don’t end up looking like Kim Kardashian’s or Gigi Hadid’s, it can be more than just disappointing.

Plastic Surgery and Confidence

There are many people out there who preach the ideology that you should love yourself just the way that you are. While we see where these people are coming from, there is absolutely no shame in wanting to change the way you look either. Part of practicing self-love is doing what will make you happy and if having a rhinoplasty

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of celebrities out there who have promoted the positive effects of plastic surgery on their sense of confidence. Lisa Kudrow, most well-known for her role as Phoebe Buffay on the hit sitcom Friends, is a great example of this. You may not know it, but when she was in high school, Kudrow decided she wanted a nose job. She says that changing her appearance in this way made her feel a hundred times better about the way she felt, boosting her confidence instantly, “I went from, in my mind, hideous, to not hideous.”

Of course, undergoing plastic surgery to make our noses smaller or our stomachs flatter can make us feel more confident in our bodies. However, it is not realistic for us to think that plastic surgery will instantly make us feel great and no longer have low self-esteem. Improving self-esteem is a feat that will take more than just plastic surgery to achieve, but maybe years of practice.

Although, that being said, plastic surgery can definitely help you get there. It might just be the first step in your overall journey. While it may not be the answer for everyone, it is completely valid and okay if it is the right answer for you.

Procedures to Boost Self-Esteem

McLean Clinic provides an extensive selection of cosmetic procedures that can help you improve your confidence, which can lead to an increase in your self-esteem. Overall, many patients are happy with the results of their image-enhancing procedures, and it is likely that you will feel the same way.

To find out if plastic surgery is right for you, contact us today. We will gladly schedule a consultation with you in order to discuss the goals of your procedure and how it may help improve your self-esteem.