Director Mikiya Takasu warns that “many young people are unfortunate because they believe they are ugly，” and that placing too much emphasis on looks will lead to a decline in the country’s happiness level．
[Interview with Director Mikiya Takasu] Dr. Mikiya Takasu (49), director of the Takasu Clinic Nagoya branch, shared his thoughts on the lookism that is affecting young people in Japan. Pointing out that the popularity of Instagram and TikTok is inducing lookism, Director Takasu declared, “If lookism becomes excessive, the happiness of the nation will decline!” A leading figure in the cosmetic surgery industry has sounded the alarm against the “supremacy of looks.” (Omitted) –When did you start to feel that lookism was becoming excessive in Japan while practicing medicine? Takasu: It was definitely when Instagram and TikTok started to become popular. Young people have started using Instagram and everyone is now uploading selfies to the social media platform. I now have many more opportunities to look at photographs and compare myself to people of the same age and situation. From then on, I started to become more conscious of my looks. With the ability to take high-resolution photos and view them immediately, many people realize how ugly their faces really are. Young people who get plastic surgery always say, “I want the pictures, I want the pictures.” There are many people who don’t like the way they look in photos. –Everyone tries desperately to look cute. Takasu’s photos are just a snapshot of a moment, so no matter how good looking a person is, they can end up looking ugly. When you smile, your eyes may narrow and your nostrils may flare. When they see photos in which they don’t look cute, they come to me and say, “I look ugly in photos, so I need plastic surgery.” There are an increasing number of young girls who, even when you say, “Yes, you’re cute,” insist on saying, “But the photo,” making it impossible to have a conversation. –What do you think about the trend of being too obsessed with looks? Takasu: I think it’s making young people today unhappy. A lot of people worry about things they don’t need to worry about. There are many people whose perception is simply distorted in their brains. I feel sorry for them because there are so many people who don’t actually have an ugly face, but just assume that they do, which leads to mental illness. –If lookism becomes excessive and the number of people wanting to look pretty increases, isn’t that a positive thing for the plastic surgery industry? If the number of people getting Takasu plastic surgery increases and we end up in a society where everyone has plastic surgery, I think it would be unfortunate for the entire nation. About 20 years ago, there were only a few cosmetic surgery clinics here and there, and only a small proportion of the population had plastic surgery. I think that the happiness level on a national level would have been higher when people truly fixed the flaws in their faces, but today, many Japanese people, especially young people, believe that their faces are ugly and compare themselves to everyone else. Take a picture. I think that the number of people getting plastic surgery is increasing because their self-esteem is low, so it’s not really a good thing. As demand increases and it becomes more cost-effective and profitable, more and more doctors are choosing to go into cosmetic surgery, which is not a very good trend for the country as a whole. — Plastic surgery powerhouses don’t make people happy. Takasu: Korea is even more of a plastic surgery powerhouse than Japan, and has the highest plastic surgery rate per capita in the world. And as you probably know, Korea is a society that is extremely lookist and has a large visual disparity. There’s a trend that women have to be beautiful and young. Across the country, being beautiful gives you a huge advantage in job interviews, so it’s become commonplace to have plastic surgery before a job interview. It seems like short men have no human rights. The more lookism there is, the less happy we are. So I think it would be better if the world only used plastic surgery to fix the truly flawed parts of the face that deviate from the average.
>>1 Once you have plastic surgery, you’re offered new cosmetic surgery every time you get maintenance, so many people end up over-customizing and their minds and bodies get worn out I want them to put more effort into mental care Once you have plastic surgery, you’re not satisfied, but once you have plastic surgery, you can’t stop, or you have to go for maintenance for the rest of your life, so in the end, there are a lot of people who are mentally dissatisfied and sick.
>>9 The trend of drama movies has been around for a long time The ugly supporting characters are there to liven things up Well, they’re supposed to be supporting characters, but they’ve been making that kind of system for a long time.
Whether you’re ugly or not depends on whether you’ve ever had someone confess their love to you. If you’ve never had someone confess their love to you in your life, then you’re ugly.
Well, when you see people who are confident in their looks getting tens of thousands of views just by doing a little dance on TikTok, it makes you wonder why it’s them.
It’s true that the ugliness of the inside of lefties shows on their faces. Maybe if they could cure the disease of being lefties, they’d look a little better!?
When you open Instagram, you see all these plastic surgery monsters who made their money through porn and such boasting about their glamorous lifestyles, so it must make them feel inferior. They don’t have any substance, so you should just ignore them.
I think there are seriously less ugly people these days. Back in the day, makeup techniques weren’t as good as they are now, so there were a lot of incredibly ugly people who you couldn’t look at for a second.
>>30 In the past, the standards for what celebrities were popular with the opposite sex were weird, so people copied weird hairstyles and such. Nowadays, it’s common for hairstyles to be 100 points and faces to be 30 points, but in the past it was 20 points for hairstyles and 30 points for faces.
Body dysmorphia and money dysmorphia are especially prevalent in the SNS generation, and are common issues in all countries where SNS is widespread. I think Takasu’s son, Mikiya Takasu, also posted a video about this issue. SNS really does cause too much harm.
I’m super ugly but I’ll never get plastic surgery. I could do something like my eyelids, but if I get some silicone or some other weird stuff put in and it falls apart, my face will definitely look even worse than it is now. And once I have kids, it’ll definitely be obvious.
Comments