Things we don’t think are a good idea: Surgery to get thigh gap

Let’s be clear: There isn’t anything wrong with having a thigh gap. Everyone has a unique body type, and whether your thighs touch or not doesn’t say anything about your health, well-being, or lifestyle. But the specific pursuit of the thigh gap has become such a cultural phenomenon that women are now turning to plastic surgery to get thigh gaps, and that trend does deserve some scrutiny and worry.

Let’s be clear again: Plastic surgery isn’t something that, on its own, people need to defend. If you want to undergo procedures to alter your appearance, whatever those may be, that’s your decision. The issue becomes when plastic surgery leads to further complications or harm, which is the case with thigh gap surgery. While there are common procedures out there for removing fat from the thigh area, they’re usually for removing excess skin from weight loss, not cutting into otherwise healthy tissue.

The consequences of surgery that tries to create an unnatural thigh gap: Legs that may not heal into the results patients desired in the first place. As Dr. Victoria Karlinsky says in The Inquisitr, “Trying to create a gap will likely result in skin irregularities and unnatural looking legs.” As with any cosmetic surgery, there’s also no way of knowing how the body will grow around and into these changes.

One of the main ideas behind the thigh gap chase is effortlessness, and there’s something to that: It is effortless to have a thigh gap if your body grows out that way, just as it’s effortless for some people to have thighs that touch, or to have straight or curly hair, or wider hips or shoulders. The variety of body types and expressions for people of all genders and sexes is something that we want to celebrate, versus forcing ourselves to conform to shapes and sizes that might, at their core, be impossible to achieve healthily.

And in the end, that’s what most of the thigh gap debate is about: Is it an impossible goal, or is it something that can be “achieved”? We’re of the opinion that it’s just another body feature, one that shouldn’t be forced into a warped emblematic status. Because no matter what other people say or think, your body is just that: Yours. And that’s an idea worth celebrating as beautiful.

(Image via.)

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