Sometimes I think I’m going to be one of the few women that ages naturally, well somewhat naturally (more on that later). My friend surprised me with a free subscription to Self magazine and I got my first one a few weeks ago. There were some really interesting articles in there that I enjoyed and then there was one article that I avoided for quite awhile. It was about this new trend of women having “Awake” surgical procedures, which is basically women going under the knife for things like breast implants, liposuction, etc under just a local anesthesia in order to reduce the cost of the procedure. The women in the article shared their stories of botched jobs, near death incidents, the shock of not getting the results they were expecting, the agonizing pain they endured, and the lack of concern from their doctor or the doctor’s assistants during their procedure.

What didn’t make sense to me about the article was that the women were genuinely surprised to have those type of outcomes. I mean I know no one goes in there expecting something horrible to happen, but really, given the circumstances how could you not expect that? As it is plastic surgery and liposuction procedures done under the best of circumstances and with the proper care and licensed professionals can still have unexpected emergencies come up, what could you truly expect to happen from an “Awake” procedure that not only pushes the limits of your pain threshold but on top of that, per this particular article, most of these types of procedures weren’t done by specialists in the field.

I know we all have a right to choose what we do to our bodies and whether we let mother nature take its natural course. But to be so naive as to think that something cheaper and done under less than proper practices will have good results is just lying to yourself. But I guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite anyway because although I don’t want to ever go under the knife for plastic surgery/enhancements, I do fight natural aging in the sense that I color my hair to hide some gray hairs, wear sunblock to prevent further damage to my face, etc. In the end though I hope that I can just embrace my wrinkles and the knowledge that my body is bound to change, and I will smile at the fact that what’s in my heart and mind is more precious than any outer appearance. Besides, wrinkles are just a sign that I’ve had many happy moments!