Associations between attitudes toward cosmetic surgery, celebrity worship, and body image among South Korean and US female college students

Introduction Cosmetic and plastic surgery procedures, such as liposuction, rhinoplasty (nose reshaping), and breast augmentation, and minimally invasive procedures, such as Botox injections and chemical peels, continue to increase in popularity in the West (American Society of Plastic Surgeons 2014). According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), the world’s largest organization of board-certified plastic surgeons, 15.1 million cosmetic surgery procedures, excluding reconstructive surgery procedures, were performed in the United States in 2013 (American Society of Plastic Surgeons 2014). The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (2015) reports that Americans spent more than 12 billion dollars on surgical and nonsurgical (i.e., minimally-invasive) procedures in 2014. The top five cosmetic surgical procedures were liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, tummy tuck and rhinoplasty. Increased popularity of cosmetic surgery has been attributed to a number of factors such as the increased importance of physical appearance in contemporary societies, the lower cost of procedures, and Abstract