Transcript

Voice 1  

Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Liz Waid.

Voice 2  

And I’m Bruce Gulland. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for
people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.

Voice 1  

Christina Lim sits in a hospital bed. Her face is very swollen. It is two times its normal size. She has
blue and green bruises under her eyes. Her skin looks damaged. She is in terrible pain. She speaks,
but it is difficult to understand her. Her mouth is too swollen for her to speak clearly. She told ABC
News,

Voice 3  

“I cannot describe the pain. I keep feeling this knife cutting through my bones... All for beauty. All
for what?”

Voice 2  

Lim is 20 years old. Doctors have performed an operation on her face. They changed her nose.
They also made her face smaller. To do this, they had to cut off some of her jaw bone. The
operation took many hours.

Voice 1  

Lim is experiencing horrible pain. But Lim did not need to have this operation, or surgery. Lim is one
of the millions of people every year worldwide who choose to have cosmetic surgery. Today’s
Spotlight is on the growing business of cosmetic surgery.

Voice 2  

Any medical operation where doctors have to cut into the skin to fix a part of the body is a surgery.
In plastic surgery, doctors repair or re-make parts of the body or face. When people choose this
kind of surgery for non-medical reasons, it is called cosmetic, or aesthetic, surgery. A person
chooses this kind of surgery to change the way their body or face looks.

Voice 1  

Like any other surgery, cosmetic surgery involves risks. One of the most common is hematoma. It
is blood that collects in the body. This can be very painful. It can lead to more surgery. Fluid can
also collect in the body. This can lead to damage and sickness. Serious infection is another risk of
cosmetic surgery. It happens to 2-4% of patients. Cosmetic surgery can also damage nerves in the
body. For example, some women have cosmetic surgery to make their breasts larger. But they may
lose feeling in the breasts after this surgery.
Voice 2  

A rare, but very dangerous risk of cosmetic surgery is getting a blood clot. Blood can become a
partly solid mass, or clot. When the clot travels through the body, it can cause harm, and even
death. Solange Magnano was the former Miss Argentina. In a famous case in 2009, she died from
a blood clot after cosmetic surgery.

Voice 1  

Most people who get cosmetic surgery are women. But men get cosmetic surgery too. A little over
12% of all cosmetic surgery operations are for men. And the number of men getting cosmetic
surgery grows every year. The number of both men and women getting cosmetic surgery is
increasing in many places around the world.

Voice 2  

The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reports that in 2014, there were over nine
and a half million cosmetic surgery operations worldwide. Most of these operations happened in
the United States, Brazil, Japan, South Korea and Mexico. There were also over ten and a half
million non-surgical procedures. These include procedures like removing unwanted hair or injecting
substances under the skin to remove wrinkles or make a body part larger.

Voice 1  

In the United States, one in every 20 women has had some kind of cosmetic surgery or procedure.
But the country of South Korea has the highest rates of cosmetic surgery in the world. In South
Korea, one in every five women has had cosmetic surgery.

Voice 2  

People from other countries also travel to South Korea to get cosmetic surgery. ABC News reports
that more than seven million people have travelled to South Korea to get cosmetic surgery. From
2013 to 2014, the number of Chinese people travelling to South Korea for cosmetic surgery
increased by 45%. But the number of cosmetic surgeries IN China is also increasing. One Chinese
surgeon told the BBC,

Voice 4  

“There are now more than 300 private cosmetic surgery centres in Beijing. Back in the early 1990s
there were none! The whole country is growing at the same speed.”

Voice 1  

The BBC interviewed a young woman getting cosmetic surgery in China. She said,

Voice 5  

“My family and friends do not know that I am having this surgery. I am getting my nose and chin
done this time. I think they look OK but I want them to be perfect.”

Voice 2  

Remember Christina Lim, the woman at the beginning of the story? Lim is from South Korea. She
did not really want to get surgery. However, she is a language translator. She has appeared on
television to interpret Korean into English. She would like to continue this job. But people did not
think she looked good enough to be on television. She even received critical messages on social
media. She told ABC News,

Voice 3  

“I got lots of hate comments, like, ‘Why is she even on TV? Why is she so fat?”

Voice 1  

When Lim finished her surgery, she felt that she looked better. And she liked it. But she told ABC
News,

Voice 3  

“If I were to talk to all my friends, I would tell them not to do it. If they do not have a problem living
with their faces, I would tell them to get new friends who like their big faces.”

Voice 2  

Lim did not know if she felt good or bad about her surgery. She did not like that people use the
same limited idea of beauty. If there is only one way to look beautiful, then everyone starts to look
the same. Lim said,

Voice 3  

“In Korea, you go down the streets, and you see this girl. And you keep walking, and you see that
girl again. But it is really a different person.”

Voice 1  

But one Chinese plastic surgeon has no bad feelings about cosmetic surgery. He believes that
cosmetic surgery makes people more beautiful. He told the BBC,

Voice 4  

“The greatest thing about becoming more beautiful is happiness.”

Voice 2  

Do you agree? Does cosmetic surgery make people more beautiful? Does it make them happier?
Tell us what you think. You can leave a comment on our website. Or email us at
radio@radioenglish.net. You can also comment on Facebook at Facebook.com/spotlightradio.

Voice 1  

The writer of this program was Jen Hawkins. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard
were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and
voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again, and read it, on the internet at
www.radioenglish.net. This program is called, ‘Cosmetic Surgery: The Search for Beauty’.

Voice 2  
We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.