Were you ever bullied as a kid? Maybe you should have gotten a nose job.
Even though that sounds like an outrageous solution, the New York-based nonprofit organization Little Baby Face provides free plastic surgery for bullied middle and high school students.
The Little Baby Face Foundation is teaching kids that if they want to stop being bullied, then they should change — not the bullies.
Little Baby Face operated on a 14-year-old girl in 2012. They paid for surgery that she requested — an operation that would pin her ears back because kids at Ilse’s school had been referring to her as “Dumbo.”
More recently, the nonprofit provided a 15-year-old with a rhinoplasty and a chin job. She was known by her classmates as “the girl with the big nose.” The teasing had become so intense and pervasive that she did not attend school for three years, opting to be home-schooled instead.
On its website, Little Baby Face says it was “born out of the desire to serve and assist children with birth deformities and their families that are without resources by providing them with the life-changing restorative treatments and surgeries free of cost.” It also claims to have “helped” more than 500 children with facial deformities since it was founded in 2002.
While I certainly feel immense sympathy for these emotionally scarred children, I don’t believe this is the way to help them.
There has to be nothing worse than submitting a request to this organization and then being approved for surgery. It’s almost as if the Little Baby Face Foundation is agreeing with the bullies’ thinking.
This fascination with cosmetic surgery has invaded cities other than Los Angeles and Hollywood. Not only can these young children receive “life changing” operations, so can anyone in Baton Rouge. With a quick Google search, one can find that there are more than 30 different cosmetic surgery and dentistry offices within a 10 mile radius of the University.
Feeling left out on such a large campus? Buy yourself a new face!
Bullying is not a new phenomenon, nor is it one that affects only a small population of people. During my time in elementary, middle and high school, classmates made fun of everything from my bad acne to the size of my breasts to the fact that I wore glasses. This is not an experience unknown to most.
The occurrence of bullying and the overall mean-natured spirit of children and adolescents is not something to blow off as being “just what kids do.” Teasing fellow students about their physical appearance perpetuates and demonstrates our unnatural obsession with beauty.
Encouraging bullied children and teenagers to seek help in the form of cosmetic surgery is just letting the bullies win. They don’t learn anything from their mistakes or suffering, but hey – there’s a brand new nose involved, so why complain?
Bullies are the ones who need to change their ways. Kids who think it’s funny to prey on classmates to make them feel alienated and ugly are what needs to be corrected, not some young girl’s protruding ears.
Although the Little Baby Face Foundation helps underprivileged children with facial deformities – real ones, not just noses deemed unattractively large – that hinder them from performing daily tasks or communicating, it’s a shame this has become an option for America’s youngest generation.
Apparently, if the public has a problem with you, then you should do everything in your power to change yourself to conform to their standards.
The attitude should not be “above all — be attractive.” Kids and adolescents should strive for better grades, more involvement in their communities and self-care rather than being aesthetically pleasing to everyone they meet.
As Beyoncé says in her song “Pretty Hurts,” “It’s the soul that needs the surgery.”
SidneyRose Reynen is an 18-year-old film and art history freshman from New Orleans.