So I am headed to SUNY Fredonia on Friday to deliver the keynote address for their Hispanic Heritage Month opening ceremonies (Hispanic Heritage Month is September 15th through October 15th, more on that in later posts, I am sure). I’ll be talking about 10 different things, but one of the things that I will be reflecting on is the increasing rate of plastic surgery among Latinas. I can’t reveal everything here pre-talk, but I thought I would at least give you some food for thought below.
What was one of the most surprising discoveries for you in your research? Latinos in the United States lead all minority groups in cosmetic surgery, comprising 6% of the 9.2 million cosmetic surgery procedures performed in the United States in 2004 (and 8.5% of cosmetic procedures in general, including noninvasive procedures). That’s more than half a million procedures performed on Latinos in 2004, which represents nearly double the number in 2000. In 2005, those numbers jumped by another 921,000 procedures, an increase of 67% from the previous year. The most popular surgical procedures for Latinas were nose reshaping, breast augmentation, and liposuction. Is the increase in surgery among Latinos representative only of the rise in plastic surgery in the United States in general, or is there a beauty standard among Latinos that makes them susceptible to increased plastic surgery?
