Here is the promp to follow for this assignment.
Mark Magnier’s “If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It” describes a beauty pageant in Beijing that is open only to women who have had some kind of cosmetic surgery. Similar to Don Lee in “Plastic Surgery Just to Get a Job,” Magnier also explains the popularity of plastic surgery in some big Chinese cities, and the preference among some young educated Chinese for “Western standards of beauty” regarding facial features. Perhaps the lone example of an opinion against such surgery appears on p. 4 (or 5), when Magnier quotes one individual here: “If China…we will lose our soul.” Consider the numerous high-profile and ordinary Americans who choose plastic surgery and the parents who occasionally give the graduation “gift” of cosmetic surgery to their child. Obviously, we know what a plastic surgery patient gains when s/he chooses a nose job, breast implants or eye procedure, but what does this individual lose in the process? When millions of fans watch a show like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, expressing their admiration for various Kardashians and Jenners who get certain kinds of cosmetic surgery, what values and priorities are being held up as worthwhile and/or “necessary for a self-loathing person” to be able to “love herself”? Since men, in general, do not face the same kind of intense scrutiny that women do regarding specific details of their physical appearance (i.e., “fat” ankles, “pouty” lips, “symmetrical breasts” etc.), can the “average” heterosexual male relate, at all, to the kind of intense pressure some women feel to “improve” their physical appearance?