Dr. Sarah Burnell

Wow.

So when a conventionally unattractive woman was described as undergoing plastic surgery, there wasn't really any stigma associated with that for her, but for the conventionally attractive woman, it was kind of heavily stigmatised and, yeah, as I said, all the way down to, like, she was seen as less human for making that choice.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think interestingly like it's almost, I mean, and we didn't test this to be fair, this is just my conjecture, but I feel like that is a testament to the empathy that people feel, right, because they know that pretty privilege is so prevalent.

So in the context of a woman being conventionally unattractive, it's like they can understand more readily that

why she quote unquote needs to have plastic surgery.

Whereas for an attractive woman, obviously that empathy isn't really there.

And it's interesting to me how both empathy and stigma can exist within the same space as well.

I mean, I think it suggests that everybody has body image issues ultimately.

I mean, maybe there's someone out there who doesn't and kudos to them, but we all go through it and I think that means that everyone to a degree can really...

empathise and understand with the desire to have surgery done.

But the interesting part is when they decide that for them, that's a step too far for whatever reason.

And so then that stigma sort of comes in.

Essentially all of them described, you know, after I had this procedure done or...

Even when I was talking about having cosmetic surgery, I received negative reactions from people really sort of centralising the idea that cosmetic surgery was somehow the wrong thing to do.

And interestingly, you know, these were women who had then gone on to have the procedure and a lot of the time they ended up internalising that stigma.

So they would kind of express that they felt glad that they did it but then also in the same breath they'd be like,

oh but I had to do surgery because I'm lazy so I couldn't do it through diet and exercise like I should have.

Like there was almost this self-shaming that went on.

I think I would best describe it as ageing is now...