Brazil's approach to plastic surgery demonstrates a different way of thinking about physical appearance.
 | By Cornelia Channing Editorial Assistant, Sunday Opinion |
A few years ago, the journalist Sushma Subramanian went on a reporting trip to Rio de Janeiro with her family. Everything was going smoothly until, a few days into the trip, her 2-year-old daughter, Anika, took a bad spill in their hotel room and cut open her face.
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In her guest essay for Times Opinion, Subramanian recalls flying into a panic. As she rushed Anika to the emergency room, she worried about the pain, she worried about how she would communicate with the doctors in a language she didn't speak, and perhaps most interestingly, she found herself worrying about her daughter's future. |
The cut was bad but not life-threatening. It would heal, but it would almost certainly leave a scar. What would that mean for Anika's life? What if she wanted to be a news anchor? Or an actress? Would she have trouble finding a job with a scar on her face? Would she have trouble finding a partner? |
Subramanian felt embarrassed and shallow for being so concerned about her daughter's looks, but her worries were not unfounded. |
Coincidentally, there is perhaps no country on the planet that understands the value and importance of beauty better than Brazil. Widely recognized for its skilled plastic surgeons, Brazil officially acknowledges a right to beauty, which means that, among other things, the government subsidizes cosmetic procedures — making them widely accessible and affordable. Under these policies, Subramanian was given the choice to get special cosmetic-grade stitches for Anika, which would reduce the scarring significantly. And the whole thing would cost just a few hundred dollars. |
In her thoughtful and probing essay, Subramanian reflects on her decision, analyzes the source of her anxieties and wonders how the experience might have been different if the accident had happened in the United States, where treatments like the one Anika received are much harder to get and are often prohibitively expensive.
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