Radical surgery permanently extends your legs
futurism.com
futurism.com
i don’t recommend it for aesthetics! in his case, it was required and something they wanted to do before his growth plates closed completely. As a result he's had a normal adulthood.
Anyway if a person's only dating criteria is your height and they themselves are not around that height, then I think it is best to stay as far away from that person as possible. I knew couple people like that and over the years they have had lots of relationship issues.
Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-common-is-it-for-a-...
How big is this difference? Well if 25 percent of women only dated taller men, and the other 75 percent of women were totally indifferent, we would see this. So not quite as extreme as one might guess from a statistic like "92.5 percent of men are taller than their partners".
The first two had me using the external lengthening frame, which makes for a gruesome looking leg with thin long screws drilled through your bone and poking out to connect to two metal rings whose spacing controlled the lengthening. It’s about as painful as you’d imagine it is to wake up after surgery with a half dozen screws through now your two pieces of fibula. I remember being scared of hitting the frame on things because of how painful it was.
At 17 I was able to take advantage of an internal lengthening rod, so no frame needed. It’s much nicer than a frame and I would say that is what all the article’s patients use. Remarkable medical tech.
By the time my last one was near I’d forgotten how bad the experience was. I took only 2 weeks off work. I was stupidly overconfident. I spent 1 week in hospital really drugged up and in heaps of pain, with a freshly broken femur, and then got home and had a worse week. It was too painful to sleep for a couple of months and the lengthening itself was awful, as my quad muscles were being stretched in ways that a child’s muscles will handle but my adult muscles were hating. I’d spend over an hour a day stretching my leg that originally could only bend 50 degrees, and more than once the pain brought me to tears.
Once I could get to a physiotherapist she was shocked at how cut up and bruised the surgery had made me. Over half the surface area of my right buttock, hip, and upper leg was purple, with 6 new scars. By that point, a month in, I had come to reckon with how brutal this surgery is, and that I had months and months of recovery left. I was not a happy person. Pretty angry, to be honest.
I couldn’t walk unaided by crutches for over 6 months, and I’d been aching to be able to walk since about day 14 of my recovery.
My right femur is now 4cm longer. People doing this surgery for cosmetic reasons do both legs and much more than 4cm at a time, sometimes 12cm. 12cm in one go must be agony for adult muscles, and it would take a over a year and half to get walking again. Having just experienced 4cm on one leg, it’s incredible that we let people do this to themselves so that they can be more attractive.
There was an amazing Channel 4 (UK TV channel) documentary a while back about penis enlargement surgery. _Every single person_ who appeared in it should probably have been referred to a psychologist. One guy had it done about 10 times.
Will my legs be more prone to breaking (for instance, when jumping)?
Will my gait, or my balance be altered? Will this become a non-issue over time?
I'm curious.
Another downside is that you will have scars all over your legs.
Your legs should not be more prone to breaking.
Gait and balance will initially of course be affected, but there’s no long term problems there.
On the other hand, my mother has one leg slightly longer than the other. It does cause her pain, but all she needs is a shoe insert to correct the issue. It really isn't a big deal at all, and avoiding pain is definitely worth it.
Don’t worry about them: if these conversations become annoying to you, just find better understanding friends.
I’m not arguing for or against this procedure though: it can be helpful for some people and can be damaging (both physically and mentally) to others like any other cosmetic surgery.
No need to worry about that. This process takes several months.
Possibly the best argument against getting this kind of bizarre cosmetic surgery.
And besides, if it weren't permanent, why would one go through the pain of the surgery in the first place? I'd actually argue that if the permanence is something that bothers you, this is certainly not something you would personally consider, but it certainly isn't really an argument against it being available for the wider population.
But things like that can mean that while you were alive, you were happier.
Dental surgeries can make you look normal and improve function. Pacemakers help you live longer.
There are things that regular people can do that will survive their deaths. Mostly, having children. But also having close relationships with other people who will remember you, tell stories about you, and so on. I expect plenty of people on HN will write code that will survive them.
But thanks for your very helpful link to wikipedia.
These are methods of self-expression. (usually) people get tattoos because they want to remember something or because they like the aesthetics of it.
Breaking your legs or enlarging your breasts is done (often I'd say, not necessarily always) to attract others and to try to appeal to some beauty standard. There is a huge difference between self-assertion and trying to satisfy others expectations. The former is healthy, the latter is insecurity and making self-worth dependent on how one appeals to others in the most banal way is one of the most harmful things you can do arguably.
So... Because they like the aesthetic? Some people also get tattoos because they want to look tough, or fit into a certain crowd. You can find unhealthy and healthy expressions of both tattoos and cosmetic surgery. I doubt very much that you have firm numbers that one is far more likely than the other to be a healthy expression of aesthetics.
Also, if you have to justify what you want to do to your own body by "expression", are you no longer allowed to decide what you want to eat, or whether you are allowed to sun tan? It's an absurd requirement for agency.
Any mature conception of expression entails that you ask yourself if you're expressing yourself for your own sake or if you're molding yourself to the expectations of others.
Having genuine autonomy and agency means inquiring yourself if what you're doing is something you actually want, or you only think you want because it confers status. It's not obvious at all that everything you superficially want also makes you genuinely happy or if it's the product of some mimetic desire.
The question of health is determined by individual outcome, not according to some a priori definition. If the outcome yields positive long-term physical, emotional or behavioural changes, then the person is healthier. This will include decisions based on status, self-expression, or anything else you may approve or disapprove of.
One could argue that perhaps status-seeking reasons typically yield less healthy outcomes when compared to self-expression reasons, but that nuance hasn't been in the discussion so far.
If breast reduction surgery was cheaper and less invasive, I would have had it long ago. It'd be nice not to have to order bras or go to special stores. Or to fit into normal clothing more often. Plus, I'd be slightly happier with my shape. Not everyone would see the aesthetic of it, nor would anyone really say there is expression in it - but what the frick does that matter? It is my body and my life. I'm not sure how this is any different. It doesn't matter if I would get the surgery or not - I'd not do a lot of things others do.
I’d be wary of most cosmetic surgery, but this is probably about the most extreme form.
But that's really besides the point: Once we die, none of it matters, and that was my point.
https://jezebel.com/stories-about-my-brother-1835651181
Author's brother died from am embolism resulting from height extension surgery.
> patriarchy and white supremacy
not on men.
If this is a cultural norm or an inherent part of human nature is both debatable and researchable. To me, it has all the marks of a builtin preference of our species.