Driving is a constant part of my life. I’m always dropping my daughter off at school or picking her up, driving myself to school or taking four freeways to Los Angeles to get to my internship. Never mind all the other random trips I take in my car.
With all this time in the car I have to have the radio on to distract me from the mind-numbing drive. But there is something new on the radio that is driving me nuts.
No matter which station I listen to it seems to follows me. Plastic surgery commercials are everywhere and they make me sick to my stomach.
One of my morning habits is listening to the crazy Jamie, Jack and Stench morning show on STAR 98.7, but I can’t stand hearing the ads for the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon that are being spewed into my ears at every break.
So I change the station over to KIIS FM and there they are again. “Get your breast augs today,” is shouted through the speakers for every impressionable teenage girl to hear.
Like it isn’t hard enough growing up in today’s world, but we have to add to it by telling young women that the bodies they were born with aren’t good enough and they should buy new ones.
I find it absolutely shameful that our nation’s innocence is being sold to the highest bidder.
Actually it’s not even being sold; it’s being bought by idiots like parents who give their daughters breast implants for high school graduation.
When I heard about a few of the girls from my high school who had graduated from school and then to a bigger cup size, I was sad.
Where are the parents who are supposed to be there telling them that they are naturally beautiful?
What did they think would happen when they bought their body parts; that they would magically love themselves more and become happier people?
I have had surgery and it is a scary thing.
You sign forms that say if anything should happen to you, your family can’t sue the hospital and other creepy things like that.
Now I signed those papers because my life depended on getting that surgery, but I can’t imagine signing that form because I wanted to look like Barbie.
The worst is when parents go under the knife for superficial reasons. Would you really risk your life for a new nose or chest knowing that your child might not have a parent as a result?
If a parent, in an attempt to feel comfortable in a bikini, can actually sign that form and tell their child they might not be there to see them grow up, then they don’t deserve the gift they have been given.
All of this makes me just so thankful to my mom. She taught me to love myself and know that I am worth more than anything superficial.
I can only hope that other young women out there hear it from their family and friends also, because they certainly hear the opposite from everywhere else.
A healthy body is a gift and where I come from you don’t have to pay for gifts.
You know, now that I think about it maybe I’m wrong and the plastic people are actually smarter than the rest of us. In fact if I get plastic surgery then I will last forever, and I’ve always wanted to be just like Styrofoam.
Angie Gangi, a senior broadcast journalism major, is sports editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at agangi@ulv.edu.
