Life in Plastic: The True Origin of Cosmetic Medicine
My first love was plastic surgery - and I always find it interesting to see the connotation associated with it today. People call women “plastic” as an insult, evoking the image of a Barbie doll, shaped and unnaturally molded to a male-centric ideal.
That is not what plastic surgery (or aesthetic medicine) is, was, or should be.
Plastic comes from the Greek “plastike”(teckhne) the art of modeling or sculpting, meaning return to form and function.
We know how much I love my medical history, and the origin of all cosmetic treatments really stemmed from the devastating facial traumas that were seen after the World Wars.
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In the colourful history of cosmetics, few stories have taken on such a life of their own as the so-called Lipstick Ban of 1770. Allegedly passed by the British Parliament, this infamous “act” decreed that any woman who used makeup to deceive a man into marriage could be tried for witchcraft, and that the marriage would be rendered null and void.