Cosmetic surgery candidates unhappy with pregnancy effects on the body

• Hardly a night passes without some programme or other featuring ordinary folk having bits nipped, tucked, pinched, stretched or sliced out of their bodies in glorious colour.
• For all the criticism of the extreme make-over programme, The Swan, at least it blurs the gory bits during the operating theatre sequences, while RTE's gruesomely compelling Desperately Seeking Surgery shows every sliver of excised human fat (it's vivid canary-yellow in colour) and every square foot of discarded stomach skin.
• It is sickening to hear skinny pop stars and actresses protest that their flat post-partum stomachs and pert prows are entirely due to exercise, nutrition and daily bouts of meditation when anybody can see that they've been tugged, stretched and pinned like bodhrans.
• Age, gravity and temperament are meant to take their toll on faces and bodies, and it seems unfair that folk who are already blessed with large fortunes and privileged lives can also thwart time and destiny with discreet surgery and expensive treatments.
• A survey, published a few years ago, found that the overexposure of beautiful celebrities could have a depressing effect on a civilian's self-esteem.
• It's unlikely, though, that a similar survey today would find us quite as susceptible to celebrity-induced gloom and that has to be thanks, in large part, to the very recent democratisation of cosmetic surgery.
• For many years, she said, this had made her reluctant to make eye contact with strangers and she had gone through life studying pavements and carpets in public places.
• Analysis of the survey in several newspapers concluded that celebrity mums who bounce back with washboard stomachs make the rest of us feel fat, depressed and inadequate, so we resort to surgery for comfort.
• The truth is, though, that few women are thrilled with the physical toll of pregnancy.