Modern women feel compelled to meet near-impossible standards of beauty. For many, this pursuit ultimately culminates in cosmetic surgery – a radical form of beautification that is rapidly becoming popular worldwide. Paradoxically, while prevalent, artificial beauty remains widely unaccepted in contemporary society. This narrative review synthesizes feminist dialogue, recent research, and real-world case studies to argue that female beauty standards account for both the growing popularity of cosmetic surgery and its lack of mainstream acceptance. First, we implicate unrealistic beauty standards and the medicalization of appearance in popularizing cosmetic surgery. Second, we analyze how negative attitudes toward cosmetic surgery are also motivated by unrealistic beauty standards. Finally, we generate a synthesized model of the processes outlined in this review and provide testable predictions for future studies based on this model. Our review is the first to integrate theoretical and empirical evidence into a cohesive narrative that explains the cosmetic surgery paradox; that is, how cosmetic surgery remains secretive, stigmatized, and moralized despite its surging popularity.

现代女性觉得有必要满足几乎不可能的美丽标准。对许多人来说，这种追求最终在整容手术中达到高潮——这是一种在全球迅速流行的激进美化形式。矛盾的是，虽然流行，但人造美在当代社会中仍然被广泛接受。这篇叙述性评论综合了女权主义对话、最近的研究和现实世界的案例研究，认为女性美容标准是整容手术日益流行及其缺乏主流接受度的原因。首先，我们将不切实际的美容标准和外貌医学化在普及整容手术中。其次，我们分析了不切实际的美容标准是如何激发对整容手术的负面态度的。最后，我们生成了本综述中概述的过程的综合模型，并为基于该模型的未来研究提供了可测试的预测。我们的评论是第一个将理论和经验证据整合到一个有凝聚力的叙述中，解释整容手术悖论；也就是说，尽管整容手术越来越受欢迎，但它如何仍然是秘密的、污名化的和道德化的。