Hooray for The Knife (and the needle, and the syringe, and the giant sucking machine of my imagination) [columny type piece attempt]

Plastic surgery - it's a tricky issue. Some people think it's wrong, some people are addicted to it, and some people (like moi) are on the fence.
One part of me thinks it's a dangerous road to be going down for a world already far too obsessed with beauty and perfection. It used to be a nose job here, a breast enahancement there - no big deal. But one only has to go to Hollywood (or so I'm told) to see the rise of the real Silicon Valley. In a city where your livelihood depends on your looks, and every female denizen is sporting a boob job (the average breast size in Hollywood is 36C), how do you distinguish yourself from the madding crowd? You go bigger of course. And when everyone else catches up, you go bigger again. It's a creepy cycle, and one should remember that you can only blow up a balloon so far before it pops.
But sure, that's Hollywood. Nothing's real there. Unfortunately, it seems only a matter of time before good old LA is no longer the exception but the rule. Cosmetic surgery is becoming more and more common in the 'real' world too. Quick, easy treatments like Botox are already considered the norm, and pretox - botox shots that twenty-somethings are jabbing into their foreheads in an attempt to prevent lines from forming in the first place - is on the rise. Nose jobs, face lifts, breast enhancements and liposuction are all pretty standard, and even the more bizarre surgeries (labiaplasty anyone?) are being performed more often. In some parts of the world, companies are even offering their employees leave specifically allotted to surgery recovery.
The other part of me is not entirely against the idea of surgery. A nose job has always been strangely appealing, since at the tender age of twelve my mother told me that when I was old enough we'd go and get both of ours 'fixed' at the same time (how's that for mother-daughter bonding?). And liposuction doesn't sound too awful either, a kind of fresh start if you will (I like to think that if I had the perfect body, I wouldn't fuck it up). Provided, of course, I'm knocked out at the time and don't have to think about it too much. I have this horrifying vision, you see, of a giant sucking machine, vacuum cleaner-esque, chugging away at my tummy and thighs...