Question: What is the Islamic stance on plastic surgery for aesthetic purposes?

Answer: Here's an answer my wife wrote down. Since I still get this question a lot, I hope the following helps:

(a thread)

Wsalam,

To start off, let me say that I'm pretty sure there isn't a female on the planet who hasn't thought about having some form of plastic surgery done.

The media is all about putting forth impossible standards of beauty for us to follow in order to allow the beauty industry to make big bucks at our expense.

They profit off our insecuries, making us feel that if only we could fix insert flaw here we could be as pretty as the airbrushed and photoshopped women on the magazine covers and billboards.

And we, unfortunately, fall into the snares of the media, and we end up doing exactly what they expect us to do.

Islam, however, is all about acceptance of whatever situation Allah has put you in, and making the most out of your circumstances.

You say Alhamdulillah for whatever you have, and you roll with it. This world is not a place of perfection, it is a place of testing, and Allah has given your certain obstacles to test you.

We also need to accept the fact that there are things we can control, and things we do not have the power to control.

With the technological advances we have now, we tend to feel as though we have the power to control every single aspect of our lives.

We become restless when we don't have instant access to our cellphones.
We research pills for losing/gaining weight. Or becoming more tanned, or more light skinned. We feel hopeless when we are told to accept our natural features rather than change them.

It is not part of a healthy mindset to become fixated on one particular inconvenience which you have no control over and obsess over how to gain control over it.

This is exactly why Islam has put barriers over what can be and cannot be changed; so that we spend less time obsessing over how to control them, and more time accepting whatever we have been allotted.

In this instance, you do not have the power to change your natural features; however, you do have the power to control your emotions and your overall mindset about your features.

Instead of telling yourself "I hate my nose and it's affecting my self esteem and mental health", you can try telling yourself things like:

" Alhamdulillah for my features."
"The way my nose looks does not define me as a person."

"Allah has created me perfectly, and I will not let society tell me otherwise."

I myself have spent a large portion of my lifespan hating certain features of my own and trying to find an Islamic loophole by which I can change things.

But Alhamdulillah, over time, I've grown to accept myself the way I am for the most part, and have learned to become comfortable in my own skin.

After all, everybody's features will deteriorate over time. One day our bodies will become dust.

There is no point obsessing over borrowed bodies and features.

This life and body is temporary, inshallah we should strive for patience in this world and inshallah we will have perfection in the hereafter.