What’s Wrong with a Post-pregnancy Tummy Tuck?

I came across the following article in Newsweek that reviews a picture book written to explain to young children their mother’s upcoming plastic surgery:

When she was pregnant with her son Gabriela Acosta ballooned from 115 pounds to 196. Acosta lost the weight but wound up with stretched, saggy skin. Even her son noticed it. He told her that her stomach looked “pruney,” the result, he thought, of staying in the shower too long. So the 29-year-old stay-at-home mom scheduled a consultation with Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Bal Harbour, Fla.

Acosta told Salzhauer that she wasn’t sure how to talk to her son about the procedures she was considering. That’s when he showed her the manuscript for his children’s picture book, “My Beautiful Mommy” (Big Tent Books), out this Mother’s Day. It features a perky mother explaining to her child why she’s having cosmetic surgery (a nose job and tummy tuck). Naturally, it has a happy ending: mommy winds up “even more” beautiful than before, and her daughter is thrilled.

The reassuring tale helped win Acosta over—she scheduled breast augmentation and a tummy tuck…

What’s the market for a children’s picture book about moms getting cosmetic surgery? No one specifically tracks the number of tummy-tuck-and-breast-implant combos (or “mommy makeovers,” as they’re called), but according to the latest numbers from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, breast augmentation was the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure last year, with 348,000 performed (up 6 percent over 2006). Of those, about one-third were for women over 40 who often opt for implants to restore lost volume in their breasts due to aging or pregnancy weight gain. There were 148,000 tummy tucks—up 1 percent from the previous year.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/132240

I take no position regarding explaining this stuff to the kids.  I’m passing along part of the article because it talks about the possible effects of childbearing on a woman’s body and efforts to remedy those effects.

I think many people in this country have an unreasonable antipithy toward cosmetic surgery.  I see nothing wrong with the woman in this article having a tummy tuck.  It restored her to her pre-pregnancy appearance.  It made her more appealing to her husband.  It’s a win-win situation and people shouldn’t complain about it. 

But a lot of people, especially women, are aghast at a woman having cosmetic surgery.    They seem to want to create a climate that discourages cosmetic surgery.  I don’t see why it is virtuous to go to the gym several times a week for a year or two to make yourself look better, but terrible to go to a surgeon for a tummy tuck.