Liposuction, rhinoplasty, breast implants. These are common procedures... for teenagers? In this paper, I will show how teenage plastic surgery has been constructed as a social problem. Many of the usual elements in problem construction, such as statistics and the quadrangle of claims-makers, have been used in establishing this as a problem. Their significance in establishing this problem will be discussed.

Claims-makers are essential to constructing a social problem. Claims are made by various people, who for the most part, fall into four categories. This "iron quadrangle" is composed of activists, the experts, media, and the government (Best 63). I did not fully look into it, however I did not find legislation made on teenage plastic surgery. The other three sectors of this quadrangle, however, play active roles in the construction of teenage plastic surgery as a social problem.

Activists involved in this issue belong to various groups. They include feminists, other advocates of women's rights, and even people who work against domestic abuse. One claims-maker is Joanna Briscoe, a "post-feminist designer dyke babe novelist." She claims that the power of female

Half of teens having plastic surgery are daughters of women who have had operations.

- Teen plastic surgery rose 85% between 1992 and 1998.

This article attributes the blame for the rise in these numbers to television and movies. They claim that "teen America isn't satisfied with just watching 'Baywatch.' It wants to be 'Baywatch.' " Alex Rodriguez, the author of the article, called Pamela Anderson the standard to which teens compare their breast and thighs. Allen Putnam, a cosmetic surgeon, claims that there is a lot of pressure on teens' appearance and this is causing increases in the number of cosmetic surgeries. Surgeons do not have many objections to teens getting surgery for medical reasons, such as chemical peels from severe acne, or a girl getting a breast reduction to prevent muscle damage from the pull of their bra straps. The reason surgeons are concerned, according to this article, is that the number of teens getting procedures to improve appearance, not correct problems, is the number that is growing. This may seem like mostly a girls' problem, however, before the 1990s 85 percent of one cosmetic surgeon's, Richard Sperling, teen patients were girls, but today its 60 percent girls and 40 percent boys. There is no indication whether these numbers are representative of figures of all teen plastic surgeries (Rodriguez 1).

The media is the third type of claims-maker involved in the construction of this social problem. Talk shows especially play a major role in this problem's construction. A search of television talk shows has shown that over 200 shows since 1997 have been on the topic of teenage plastic surgery (TVTalkShows.com). The shows making up this list include Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jesse Raphael, Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake, among others. We've all seen the shows with some innocent looking teenager claiming to need plastic surgery to fit in, because she feels ugly and wants to look like everyone else. This type of thing is seen by other teens and they too feel the need to change their appearance. Talk shows can be powerful claims-makes. Also, newspapers and magazines make claims regarding teenage plastic surgery. These claims will be discussed along with their statistics in the proceeding section.

These graphs show the number of articles that came up as a result of searches of the databases of the Los Angeles Times and Lexis-Nexis for articles containing both plastic surgery and teen. They show that this is a well-covered topic, although in general, coverage has been decreasing since the early 1990s.

- Twenty-two percent of all bre

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Approximate Word count = 1755
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)