Voice from Russia: The beauty industry has declared war on our bodies

In pursuit of perfection, we have gone as far as injecting fillers into our scrotums I recently read about a new trend where men are having fillers injected into their scrotums to make themselves more attractive. Some, trying to save money, turn to unlicensed beauty therapists. Others go even further and inject hyaluronic acid themselves at home and, as a result, they sometimes lose the very thing they were trying to improve. Admittedly, the problem is still more common in the United States, but even here we already have dancers and performers who regularly fill that area with whatever they can get their hands on, apparently in the hope of impressing women. To put it bluntly, there are plenty of questions, such as who is supposed to find an enlarged scrotum attractive? I can at least understand men who use fillers to increase the size of their penis, although that procedure raises enough questions of its own, but has anyone ever met a woman who chooses a man based on the size of his scrotum? The most he is likely to achieve is to surprise her. It’s an interesting phenomenon because as recently as 30 years ago, people suffering from body-image problems had very few tools with which to “improve” themselves. The most accessible option was flamboyant clothing, and even that only really became available during perestroika for Russians. Soviet citizens who were dissatisfied with their appearance had far fewer ways of “boosting their attractiveness” and men had practically none. A man who looked too extravagant risked attracting the attention of the authorities, while women with body-image issues often took up sewing or knitting and made their own unusual, custom-made clothes. People in the 1980s had few other means of changing their appearance as even dyeing one’s hair a bright color was difficult and could attract unwanted attention. Read more The famous Slavic stare: Here’s something you can’t fake In the 1990s, clothes and tattoos were added to the repertoire and later came tanning salons, followed by piercings.

People began appearing with rings in their noses and eyebrows and then came cheek piercings and stretched earlobes, but relatively few people went too far with piercings and, from a medical point of view, the damage was usually limited. Until fairly recently, people who were constantly dissatisfied with themselves had little opportunity to mutilate themselves because the tools simply weren’t available. Cosmetology had little to offer them either and before eyebrow and lip tattooing became widespread, there were few truly radical procedures. One of the more shocking treatments popular with earlier generations was a scorching peel, in which the skin was effectively burned away and, later, chemical peels became available and the industry expanded rapidly. Then came permanent make-up, silicone breast implants, silicone lip filler and hyaluronic acid as new techniques appeared, allowing fillers to be injected into the cheekbones and forehead, and then thread lifts emerged, along with many other procedures capable of producing irreversible consequences. And that’s before we even get to plastic surgery. For some time now, life has become especially difficult for vulnerable people who are dissatisfied with themselves, their lives and their careers as they are overwhelmed by the demand to demonstrate success, to appear permanently desirable and to radiate sexual energy 24 hours a day. The vast pseudo-beauty industry preys on such people as it sells them the idea of endless self-improvement and because competition within the industry is fierce, the procedures it offers become increasingly radical so “self-improvement” gradually turns into monstrification. Read more Ukraine has a new butcher-in-chief – all the better to feed Ukrainians to the grinder Lips become bigger and bigger and cheekbones becom