When Sisyphus Got a Boob Job

Everyone's an influencer now.

People in the Sun by Edward Hopper (1960) — Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum

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For just a few thousand pounds, I can fix my nose and enhance my chin. If I were feeling particularly adventurous, for the reasonable sum of £3,000, I could acquire a new pair of the most perfect breasts.

By popping on a dirt-cheap flight to Antalya, Turkey, one can correct all of the problems of a biological lottery.

Every year, over one million people travel to Turkey to get work done. The largest and loudest of this continent are the British, hundreds of thousands of whom break and bend their noses, incise and inflate their breasts, trim and tuck their stomachs, and prime and pump their ‘peaches.’

The most popular treatments are those impossibly white, porcelain-like sets of gnashers known here as Turkey Teeth. For just £3,500, I can reverse the daily onslaught of espresso, red wine, and cigarettes, and carve a lucrative career advertising toothpaste.

The British flock to Turkey not only for reasons of economy but of philosophy.

According to an enlightening feature in The Daily Telegraph from which I quote liberally,  British eagerness admires Turkish willingness to ‘push the boundaries’ of plastic surgery.

Whereas the Germans, the French, and the Swiss opt for inconspicuous nips and tucks, the British opt for the conspicuous, the risky, the trendy, and the exaggerated. ‘The Love Island and Kardashian stuff,’ as one doctor says. In a nutshell: the social-media influencer aesthetic—big lips, big boobs, big bums.

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The cosmic fame of Kim Kardashian is impossible to fathom.

Whilst researching this essay I stumbled across the most inane event in all of time.

To me, more concerning is the possibility that a housefly which has annoyed me for three days has now gone missing.

Back in 2021, you’ll be enthused to learn that Kim Kardashian, a professional egotist, unfollowed Miley Cyrus, a professional narcissist, on Instagram, a showcase of narcissism, after Ms. Cyrus flirted with Kardashian’s then-boyfriend, Pete Davidson. Reader, that’s it. That’s the story.

Like everything Ms. Kardashian does, that planet-warping event dominated the headlines. Why? The influence of the Kardashians is, like their adulterated derrieres, of great, unignorable matter.

Ms. Kardashian’s ample attributes even inspired America’s most popular plastic surgery, the Brazilian Butt Lift—that is, surgeons suck fat from one’s denser regions and inject it into one’s behind—a ‘dangerous’ procedure owing to a number of deaths.

With more Instagram followers than there are American citizens, Ms. Kardashian is president of the third most populous nation on Earth. Peruse this nation’s limitless landmass of Instagram. It’s like a strange planet populated by a strange tribe which says ‘hello’ by showing you its arse.

On Instagram, and everywhere else, ambitious influencers—both professional and amateur—do countless squats in a bid to inflate their gluteus maximus, much like women of the Kayan tribe of Myanmar stretch their necks with coiled rings.

The doctrinaire goes one better, skipping the thousands of squats in lieu of a procedure which sets few limits upon their Pluto-sized ambitions.

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Over in Turkey, the more devout surgery tourists admit to an endless quest of constant reinvention.

A current trend is that of cat-eye surgery. The patient elects for a permanent procedure which slants the eyes. I’d imagine patients desirous of impressing permanently upon their face this fleeting trend, ask for a ‘Katie Price.’

Katie Price, a British celebrity, is to cosmetic surgery what the Pope is to Catholicism. She’s had so many boob jobs she has literally lost count.

Every day, British tabloids scream with more Katie content—her new boobs, her ever-bigger bum, and her latest face. Like the hundreds of thousands of Brits who make the trip to Turkey, Katie relentlessly chases the dragon of perfection.

It’s no business of mine who does what to their body. But once you’ve fixed the roof, are you then compelled to correct the ageing brickwork, the sagging foundations, and the sapless paint job?

Reinvention is just one entry in our dictionary of social media. But what if this is not re-invention but a Sisyphean hell?

(Reader, I know that you know that I know that you know this, but, there’s always someone who assumes a Google search requires a 30-day waiting period, two forms of photographic ID, and the blood of a virgin. Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology, condemned to push a huge boulder uphill, only for the boulder to roll back down the hill—for eternity.)

A modern myth of Sisyphus, then, would entail an influencer convinced perfection was to be attained with the next slice of the surgeon’s scalpel.

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Celebrity obsession rises and falls with the ebbs and flows of opportunity. That is, when opportunity spreads, interest in celebrity wanes. Celebrity waxes when inequality soars and trust in institutions sinks.

Tellingly, the French, the Germans, and the Swiss opt for the inconspicuous whilst the Brits opt for the conspicuous. The British demand for the extreme and the public contrasts with the Alpine request for the subtle and the private.

In those countries, opportunity is broadly shouldered. That is, ordinary people can attain a middle-class life with the brains between their ears and the hands attached to their arms.

Back in the 1980s, my country lost its marbles. We shipped overseas those traditional routes to status and sanity—well-paid, secure jobs—for the fantasy of fame for all. Like America, the economy is now a game show. Our culture is now a reality TV show.

Everyone’s an influencer now. Or a brand ambassador. Or an associate. Or an entrepreneur.

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Or a celebrity. Like Sisyphus, those on the operating tables of Antalya return again and again and again.

In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus thought Sisyphus personified the absurdity of human life.

For Camus, ‘the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.’ Here, Camus coined the famous line: ‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’

Perhaps Camus was not right. But neither was he wrong.

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