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Even the Catholic Church has had it up to their scapulars with beauty conformity. This week, the Vatican\u2019s International Theological Commission released a document entitled \u201cReflecting on Christian anthropology in light of certain future scenarios for humanity,\u201d which, as with all such documents, was approved by Pope Leo XIV. The commission warns that \u201cthe perception of the body and its meaning\u201d is changing, partly due to cosmetic surgery, and that \u201cwe cannot ignore the trends that reduce the body to biological material to be enhanced, transformed, and remodeled at will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the Catholic church does not explicitly forbid the faithful from pursuing cosmetic procedures, this new document doesn\u2019t mince words: \u201cEspecially in the West, advances in cosmetic surgery \u2026 offer tools that significantly change the relationship with one’s own corporeality and therefore with reality and with others,\u201d it reads. \u201cThis leads to a widespread \u2018cult of the body,\u2019 which tends towards a frantic search for a perfect figure, which always stays fit, young and beautiful.\u201d Such modification, often done with what the commission calls an \u201cincessant frenzy,\u201d can lead to a compromised, objectifying relationship with one\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this dynamic it is no longer necessary to accept one’s own body to realise one’s own identity. It can be transformed according to the tastes of the moment,\u201d write the commission\u2019s theologians (most of whom are priests). \u201cA curious situation is created: the ideal body is exalted, sought after and cultivated, while the real body is not truly loved, being a source of limitations, fatigue, aging. A perfect body is desired, while one dreams of escaping from one’s own concrete body and its limitations.\u201d This is a fair warning even for non-believers, like this secular Jewish writer who loves her Dysport. Changing your face and body is not necessarily a path to self-love\u2014and neither is buying into the longevity industry\u2019s pricey promises of quasi-extendable life.<\/p>\n
This assessment is not uniquely Catholic, of course, or religious in any particular way. Part of the objection to looksmaxxing or the \u201cforever-35 face\u201d is the way that the phenomenon imposes a conformist version of attractiveness rather than accepting our bodies as they are. But ultimately, the Church\u2019s key qualm is rooted in spirituality. \u201cThese transformations influence the relationship with the Mystery of the origin and ultimate end of human life,\u201d the document reads. \u201cWhen human beings reduce created nature (person, cosmos) to matter to be transformed, they no longer manifest the glory of the Creator, but replace him.\u201d<\/p>\n