Hi Guys,

Something has been bothering me for quite awhile about plastic surgery.
But before I get into that, some background.

Nowadays with more and more people having access to plastic surgery its hard to believe whether a person was born good looking or has had surgery done to "fix" their looks. If thinking about having kids, what are the chances that we would pick a person who has had plastic surgery done over a naturally good looking person?

The common idea is that if someone has had plastic surgery done, its certain that the child will not look as good as the parent/parents. People attribute this to the fact that while they can have their physical appearance altered their gene's remain the same, thus "ugly" babies.

Here's a link to a blogpost which shows korean people and the drastic difference plastic surgery has made to their physical appearance.Before and After - Plastic Surgery. While the post may not be 100% accurate, there are a few well documented cases of drastic image alterations through plastic surgery.

But, we have hardly ever heard any stories about after the plastic surgery. It is very likely that these people would have kids as their chances in netting a "mate" would have dramatically increased after their make-over. That bring me to the thing that is bugging me. Would their CHILDREN really be "ugly"?

Its highly likely that I am wrong, but my hypothesis is that if the timespan between getting the surgery done and "mating" is long enough, it is possible that the children would not fully resemble the OLD appearance of the parents and instead may resemble the parents looks AFTER the surgery. And as with any hypothesis there are a few things that brought me to make this hypothesis.
- We know for a fact that the parents after plastic surgery do not totally revert back to their old appearance.
- We also know that we essentially replace our all bones cells every 10 years.
- We also know for a fact that some scars never go away.
- all the above suggest that our genes may adapt to our physical appearance as well.

That considered, isn't it likely that when these people who have had plastic surgery done have kids, that the genes used contain the blueprint of the NEW physical appearance rather than the old?

As usual please share your thought!
Thanks for reading!

A Problem Statement.

A Research Question.

And interesting hypotheses!

So, you intend to study the the genetic impact of post-plastic surgery duration on future offspring? You can produce a Case Report and publish it in the Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, or European Journal of Plastic Surgery.

This post has been edited by Critical_Fallacy: Nov 24 2013, 12:05 PM

Whether your children would inherit the genes for the looks you were born with, or the looks after plastic surgery, I think probably Bio-guy jonoave and Bio-gal LoveMeNot can answer the question “Does DNA lie?”

You are right, the basis for inheritance is in the genes. That is the basis of darwin's theory of evolution, in contrast to Lamarkism. These were the two early ideas of evolution, and subsequently darwin's theory was accepted (and now expanded, into neo-darwinism).

The changes to an individual must be inheritable, i.e. the changes must affect the genetic contents of that individuals gamete cells (for human it is the sperm and ovum). If you get skin cancer for example, the cancerous cells are limited only to your skin, and thus that change is not directly inheritable. However, if your skin cancer or high blood pressure for example, is influenced by a long family history of the disease, then the increased risk of that disease is likely imprinted in the DNA of every cell in your body, including your gamete cells.

So no, if you choose to go for plastic surgery etc - the changes is not directly heritable to your children. But then again, phenotypes (or traits) are the result of complex interactions between networks of genes, and the regulation of these gene expression. A person who is "ugly" do not automatically produce an "ugly" offspring, and vice versa. The genes do not carry hard-coded information e.g. height 1.73 m, eyes 2 cm, pupils 0.7 cm. Instead, gene A carries information such as height 1.5 - 1.8 m, if combine with gene B then 1.5-1.9, but gene C counters the effect by 2%. Then there is the cross-linking and swapping of genetic material between the male and female gamete cells during fertilisation, which spreads the variance potential even more.

Therefore your hypothesis:


The bolded part is clearly contradictory to what we know in biology. While the first 3 statements could be true, it does not necessarily show/result in the fourth statement. Correlation does not imply causation.

Now let's look at some example to illustrate my point. Let's look at bodybuilders/athletes who have greater strength and stamina by training hard. This are achieved through their practices and environmental habits, so will it be passed on to their children? Like I said, the changes can only be passed on IF it affects the DNA contents of their gamete cells.
HOWEVER, the kids of athletic parents might pick up on the good habits of their parents of a good diet, regular exercise and training. So in way, these kids have greater physical strength. In this case , if one can assume there's a genetic link between fitness in parents and kids, the assumption would simply be wrong.

Now to your question of plastic surgery. For parents that undergo plastic surgery, it is likely they are individuals who care a lot about their appearance - diet, skincare, facial care, exercise etc. So again their kids ("ugly" or average-looking) might pick up on this traits and look slightly attractive.

To expand on the issue a bit more, the issue with "beauty" as a trait is that it not a fixed variable, and even the concept of beauty in humans cannot be properly defined. E.g. in the past women with large hips were considered beautiful, and now it's skinny models with large breasts. That was only within a 100 years or so that the idea of beauty changes.

Let's just say for example the concept of beauty right now is double eyelids. And everyone that can afford it goes for double eyelid surgery. And having double eyelids gets you the advantage of free education and 1 million dollars from the government. While some individuals will go for plastic surgery to change their looks, these changes cannot be passed on their children. However, in a population there is already a small number of individuals with naturally occurring double eyelids (say 1%). And there might individuals with one and half/third/ eyelids. These individuals will have more mating success. Folks who undergo plastic surgery to get the look, might snag an individual with natural double eyelids and maybe one of their kids would have natural eyelids.

So after 100 years (or 3 generations), the number of individuals with double eyelids might be 2-3%. But then fashion changes and now the unibrow is the new beauty. So now individuals with unibrow have advantage of being picked.

To sum it simply, I believe that the concept of beauty is too fickle to be fixed (a new trait being common in a population) in our human society. Bear in mind that the idea of beauty also varies across society, so while double eyelid is popular among koreans, or dark skin is favoured by westerners while asian prefers fair skin. This just goes to show it will be difficult to put any selective advantage on any single component of beauty.

This post has been edited by jonoave: Nov 24 2013, 07:41 PM

Very informative read. Thank you!

TS, do you know that when a girl is born, she already have ALL the eggs she will ever have in her entire life? All the eggs are already physically present in her, at her own birth.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/baby/fert_text.html

http://nypost.com/2013/11/07/wife-must-pay...stic-surgeries/
A court in northern China has sided with an angry ex-husband, who sued his estranged wife for marrying him without disclosing her previous plastic surgeries.
Fuming hubby Feng Jian only found out about her wife’s scalpel-aided touch-ups after she gave birth to their baby daughter who was “ugly beyond description,” according to court papers cited by the Sina News.
Feng initially suspected his wife of having an affair. But after DNA tests proved he was the ugly duckling’s biological dad, she fessed up to having done $100,000 worth of cosmetic surgeries before they met.
A court ordered her to pay him $120,000 for his claims of marriage under false pretenses.

Can't change our biological gene. Plastic surgery is artificial.