Is Plastic Surgery Immoral? What World Religions Have to Say

Giving birth to three healthy boys was priceless. Having an incurably squishy tummy to show for it is embarrassing. And I admit that after inflating and deflating the balloon that is my belly three times, the idea of getting a tummy tuck does sometimes cross my mind. But I worry that altering my body for vanity is wrong.

Oprah says cosmetic surgery isn’t something women should be ashamed of, but still, the idea of spending thousands of dollars and undergoing surgery simply to look better doesn’t sit right with me. Since I’m a religious person who tends to think in moral terms, I called up bioethicist Arthur Caplan to get some perspective.

“[Cosmetic surgery] can seem like vanity or self-indulgence, or wasteful in terms of spending that money in the face of other needs,” says Caplan, who directs the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “But I am not convinced that anything you pursue only to make yourself look or feel better is wrong. If that were true, we’d have to condemn people who dye their hair or wear deodorant.”

But plastic surgery is a riskier endeavor than dying your hair, and that makes it a more complicated choice. The death of Kanye West’s mother last year, for example, may have been related to cosmetic surgeries she’d had, including a tummy tuck, which Steven Hopping, the president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, has described as “one of the most dangerous” cosmetic procedures.

“It’s one thing to accept risks when you’re trying to save a life or forestall a terrible disability,” Caplan tells me. “But if you are harmed or die for cosmetic reasons, that’s the hardest, most frivolous, and least necessary type of risk.”

If you’re considering cosmetic surgery, Caplan recommends consulting with someone other than the person who stands to make money off the procedure. For the religiously inclined, it makes sense to consult with a religious leader, he says. (For anyone thinking of cosmetic surgery, see Health.com’s guide to asking the right questions.)

As a Muslim, I’ve always thought that cosmetic surgery isn’t allowed, on the basis that it permanently changes the body God created and gave as a “trust” to us. But a quick email exchange with Muslim studies professor Jonathan Brockopp set me straight. In fact, Brockopp says that Muslim religious scholars have generally given the green light to cosmetic procedures that “restore functionality”—for example, after an auto accident or mastectomy.

The Catholic Church seems to have a similarly nuanced take on the issue. Although the Church’s official catechism doesn’t directly address the subject, cosmetic surgery has to be evaluated in terms of “guiding moral principles,” writes Marcel LeJeune, a lay campus minister at Texas A&M, in a blog response to a question from a Catholic considering breast augmentation. If the procedure is not for something considered immoral by the Church (such as gender-reassignment surgery), then “elective plastic surgery is left to the prudent choice of those involved,” explains LeJeune.

In contrast, Buddhists monks at the U.S. retreat center run by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh must abide by a monastic rule that specifically describes cosmetic surgery as an “offense.” Clark Strand, a former Zen monk and contributing editor at the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, tells me that this rule only applies to some monks. Among lay Western Buddhists, Strand says, “There is no widely observed prohibition against body modification, although certain ancient texts could be interpreted that way.” Among young Western Buddhists, tattoos and piercings are commonplace, he says.

Realistically, I probably would never pay the thousands of dollars for surgery or take the risks involved. (After all, I still wear glasses after years of thinking about LASIK.) But considering the issue from various points of view diffused my gut feeling that nontherapeutic plastic surgery is, on the face of it, morally problematic.

“There’s a notion in our society, which descends from the Puritan tradition, that taking short cuts is wrong, that if you want to look better you have to ‘earn it,’” Caplan tells me.

His point—that beautifying and enhancing ourselves is a neutral human instinct, and that the risks of cosmetic surgery have to be weighed maturely—makes sense. I might be religious, but I’ve never considered myself puritanical.

(PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES)

 
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