Can We Have Positive Body Image Even With Surgery?

Iggy Azalea: ‘Body image is such a complicated thing’--the title says it all.

What’s even more complicated is how we can be positive role models for an issue that we ourselves feel so complicated about.

Let’s break it down into simple terms: Iggy Azalea is a controversial Australian rapper who said, “I don’t think positive body image means always having to be 100 per cent natural.”

She’s had a breast augmentation and a nose job.

After she was already famous.

So, it’s not like she was trying to make herself fit some stereotype in order to be seen and celebrated. And there was certainly no way of her fans not noticing the changes. So, she didn’t try to hide her surgeries.

The question becomes, why?

If one has already become successful (looking the way one looks naturally), why would one want to change that look?

“I try to be body-positive, whether you’re just loving your natural self or you want to make changes…It’s important we have that conversation, because we have this Photoshop conversation a lot of the time, but it’s a bit more invasive or taboo for people to talk about the surgical ways we sometimes enhance ourselves. That’s very relevant to girls who are looking to you, or aspiring to you. As much as people should know you’re Photoshopped, they should know if you’re surgically enhanced. It’s too unfair [otherwise].”

I applaud Azalea’s honesty. And I get that people do see this whole beauty ideal as some sort of competition in a way.

Who can be thinnest? Who can be most beautiful?

But is the answer to give in to the pressures? Whether of society’s or our own making?

For young girls, knowing the truth does not always equal an ability to rationalize that they do not need to meet those beauty standards.

They may intellectually understand a photo is photoshopped or a model has had work done, but what they see is the finished product.

They see what they want to be, and they’ll do anything to get there.

The Beauty Race is a dangerous game indeed.