The kids themselves ranges from severely disabled to very mainstream-able(I have no idea what the proper way to say that these days). They also had the doctors who specialized in this and other reconstructive surgeries. The parents seemed all to be very comfortable with their special kids.

They did the surgery so the kids would look more like the mom, dad or other siblings, rather than other kids. You could still tell the kids had a “problem” but the surgery results were amazing. As an outsider to this situation, most Down’s kids that I have seen all have very similar features and don’t really look like their families. But after the surgery, there were noticeable similarities to the parents.

They didn’t drastically change the children’s features. Just smoothed out (I guess you’d say) harsh obvious features of Downs (mostly the eye shape). The kids on the show that day were happy to look like their families. You could probably write these shows for transcripts or video of the episode. In the situations presented on the show, I didn’t see a problem with it. The surgeries weren’t long drawn out over years type of changes and the kids were content. The mom’s seem to be doing for the kids, not to deny the Down’s.

Let me say that we love him tremendously no matter what the shape of his head, but I do not want his teased by people that don’t later in life. I do not want him prejudged on his “different” appearance if it can be corrected. It had nothing to do with our acceptance of him, and everything to do with his acceptance by others and himself. I know “normal” teenagers don’t like their appearance, and I see no reason to add to that stress.

Although more and more men are undergoing cosmetic surgery, women remain its chief consumers. A face lift. A tummy tuck. A nose job. A breast enhancement. The terms sound so cozy, even if the actual procedures are anything but. Women have played an active role in encouraging the culture of cosmetic surgery, but of course women are under far more social pressure than men to look good.

Even feminists disagree among themselves about cosmetic surgery. Is it capitulation to the cultural ideologies and beauty myths that have historically victimized women? Or is it a form of self-empowerment? Haiken suggests that it’s both: It may empower individual women, but its history is “a compelling reminder of just how limited has been the range of options that women have perceived to be available to them.” No cosmetic surgery has been more controversial than the silicone breast implant. Haiken’s chapter on the subject is excellent. She writes that the fundamental question is not whether cosmetic surgery is feminist or antifeminist, or whether or not implants cause illness, but how it happened that so many women became convinced that their lack of mammary endowment was a disease, and why implants were so universally heralded as a cure. Cosmetic surgery is singular among medical specialties in being consumer-driven.

Those consumers are, for the most part, average Americans. A recent survey revealed that 30 percent of patients had household incomes of $25,000 or less, and another 35 percent were in the $25,000-to-$50,00 bracket. Haiken writes, “Without the thousands of Americans who begged their surgeons to devise solutions to the problems that distressed them, cosmetic surgery would not be the phenomenon it is today.” Cosmetic surgery responds to public demand, inventing new and controversial methods of self-improvement. Liposuction, for example, in which fat is sucked out of the body with what is essentially a glorified vacuum cleaner. Or botox injections, in which small amounts of the deadly botulism toxin are injected into facial wrinkles to paralyze them temporarily.