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Teens Are Opting for New Back To School Trend: Plastic Surgery

August 27th 2015

Many teens return to school looking different than they did prior to summer vacation. Some gain weight or change their hairstyles, however, a growing number of young people appear different because they got plastic surgery during the three-month summer break. For a lot of these teens, pressure to look good on social media coupled with the desire to imitate popular celebrities drives the major life decision to go under the knife.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), nearly 64,000 teens get plastic surgery every single year, and a New York Daily News report reveals that summer is a key season for many of these procedures,so students have ample recovery time prior to the new school-year. Teens are most likely to get work done on their ears, noses,breasts, and acne scars.

"Teens often request nose reshaping or rhinoplasty surgery over long breaks before the school year to give themselves a fresh start for the year ahead," New York City facial plastic surgeon Sam Rizk told Health News Digest.

Dr. Rizk added that many teens want plastic surgery on their noses because of our selfie culture. Teens often times choose to alter their noses if they're bullied by peers and develop body image issues as a result. While Dr. Rizk said teens should only get nose jobs after the nose has fully developed, he noted that there are health benefits to having this type of surgery. For example, some teens seek nose jobs for cosmetic purposes but also to have an easier time breathing. Once they breathe better, they can have an easier time focusing and concentrating on schoolwork.

"A rhinoplasty can make a dramatic difference in facial harmony and help improve a teen's ability to perform well in school and socially," he said. "A rhinoplasty may help correct a breathing problem, fix a deformity or improve their profile and make their eyes pop, but it's not necessarily going to make any teen a shoe-in for Prom Queen or King."

Teens get plastic surgery to have higher self-esteem.

Speaking to the New York Daily News, an unnamed 17-year-old from Long Island said she went from an A cup to a C cup over the summer.

“I don’t plan to tell anyone,” she said. “People go through so many changes at my age, anyway, they may not notice. I just feel so much happier now, more comfortable in my own skin.”

A 16-year-old named Christine told the publication that getting a nose job seemed like the right thing for her to do after breaking her nose more than once during sports.

“It looked so mangled and bumped that I just wanted it fixed, ever since I was eight,” she said. “Everyone always used to make fun of me. People always asked me, ‘Have you gotten in a fight or a car accident?’ People always had to remind me that my nose was so screwed up.”

Dr. Matthew Schulman, a Park Avenue surgeon, told the publication that social media is part of the reason so many young girls want plastic surgery.

“Between social media and reality television, nobody thinks twice about plastic surgery anymore, and it trickles down to the teens,” he said. “That was virtually unheard of five years ago.”

Teen celebrities and plastic surgery.

Earlier this year, the Internet took notice of reality star Kylie Jenner's seemingly fuller lips and began to speculate that she got work done. Jenner, a 17-year-old high school senior at the time, went on to reveal that she got temporary lip fillers to combat her own body image issues.

“I have temporary lip fillers, it’s just an insecurity of mine and it’s what I wanted to do," she said during a May episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. “I’m just not ready to talk to reporters about my lips yet because everyone always picks [my family] apart."

Prior to Jenner's on the record confession, teens all over participated in the viral hashtag #KylieJennerLipChallenge. To complete the challenge, users had to stick their lips into small glasses or bottles and suck as hard as possible to temporarily give their lips a full look. The task, unfortunately, led to some bruising and unfortunate injuries for a lot of people.

“You’re creating an injury to your lips, that’s why they swell,” ASPS president Dr. Scot Glasberg told FoxNews.com. “It’s like punching yourself in the face or running your face into the wall. The whole thing is just pretty silly and irresponsible."

Of course, not all celebrities who get plastic surgery seek lip injections or breast implants. Some merely want to feel more comfortable in their own bodies. Seventeen-year-old "Modern Family" actress Ariel Winter recently revealed to Glamour that she underwent breast reduction surgery to go from a 32 F to a 34 D.

"I remember being in my sister’s wedding and being so flat and thinking, ‘I just wish I would grow boobs!’ and then overnight I did," she said. "But then they kept growing and growing and growing and it didn’t seem like they were going to stop. I was 15 years old with [size] F [breasts]. It’s like, ‘How do you navigate that?’”

Winter added that she'd wear a lot of formfitting clothes at big events because of her body shape. She noted that being a teen girl is hard enough without others making you feel self-conscious about the way you look.

"I’d have to wear the dress that was super tight and form fitted everywhere because if I didn’t, it didn’t look good," she said. "I didn’t really have an option other than to wear fitted clothes. Everyone would [say], 'Why is she dressing so mature? That’s so inappropriate for her age!' I understood what they were saying. It’s not like I wanted to pick out those inappropriate dresses, it’s just that I didn’t really have another choice, or I was going to get ridiculed. It’s hard when you’re a teenage girl and you already have a lot of ridicule and then you pile on more, and it’s kind of…it just gets too much."

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