Say no to the knife! An investigation of Chinese and Dutch women’s consideration of cosmetic surgery and how to intervene

Cosmetic surgery is associated with various physical (e.g., nerve damage) and psychological risks (e.g., depression). Yet, the global demand for cosmetic surgery has witnessed a drastic increase in recent years. Compared to men, women are more susceptible to appearance dissatisfaction and undergoing cosmetic surgery. Worryingly, the age of women seeking cosmetic surgery is getting ever younger. To gain a more fine-grained understanding of the contemporary women’s demand for cosmetic surgery, particularly from a cross-cultural perspective, a series of studies were carried out to investigate Chinese and Dutch women’s attitudes towards cosmetic surgery. Meanwhile, an online intervention was developed to target reducing women’s cosmetic surgery consideration while increasing their resistance to internalising the social beauty pressures. Overall, this thesis resulted in the conclusion that Chinese and Dutch women shared more similarities than differences in their views of cosmetic surgery, which may be in relation to the globalised social media and consumerism. Meanwhile, cosmetic surgery may be different from other appearance modification behaviours (e.g., disordered eating) since it is considered as a means to improve socioeconomic status and life satisfaction. Nevertheless, it was encouraging to observe an immediate reduction in cosmetic surgery consideration after participating in our intervention. After all, we hope that our findings can inspire future cross-cultural research in understanding (women’s) demand for cosmetic surgery and advancing psychosocial interventions to help the public to develop a healthy body image.