Meet My Friend, theglobalgirl

Thinking about it, the Internet is really kind of creepy. It’s like a stalker’s dream come true. Or just an incredibly lonely person’s. You can know everything about a person, without even knowing their real name or what they look like. And no, I’m not referring to an eharmony type of site. I have recently discovered the online world of social bookmarking. Up until a week ago, I had no idea what “delicious” was. I always saw it as an option while watching endless hours of youtube videos, but had no clue what it meant. If you clicked it, does it mean you think the video was delicious? Ah, how confused I was. Now, recently enlightened, I have been able to use delicious.com to broaden my online plastic surgery world.

While I have enjoyed reading about Heidi’s adventures under the knife, there is so much more to plastic and cosmetic surgery than just celebrity gossip. And so, enter my new-best-friend-even-though-we’ve-never-met, theglobalgirl. While perusing some bookmarked sites on delicious, I noticed that she kept reappearing on several cosmetic surgery sites that I myself am a fan of. I took a look at all of her tags, and alas, have found perhaps not my bookmarking soul mate, but definitely my bookmarking best friend. With 33 bookmarks total, they are mostly all from 2007. What I really found useful was that she made an effort to comment on each bookmark, just a couple sentences or so, to give you an idea of what the website/article is about and why she finds it interesting or useful. Additionally, she will use multiple, at times up to 11 tags for a single bookmark. She tags websites for the most part related to body image, women and teenage girls, beauty, and controversial issues related to these subjects. She has 15 tags for “plasticsurgery” and 14 for “cosmetic”, so these are what I focused on.

The majority of the bookmarks are to articles from magazines, newspapers, with a few to other blogs. I gravitated towards theglobalgirl because she highlights a different side of plastic surgery, a side rarely seen by a large part of society. Through my own blog I hope to shed light on some of these issues, and will be able to do so with theglobalgirl’s help.

One of her bookmarks resonated particularly strongly, because it involves psychology (I guess my major is good for some things). She links to an article from the America Psychological Association, which discusses the mental cost of plastic surgery. This is one aspect of plastic surgery I am really interested in exploring. Not only the psychological side effects of surgery, but also the psychological reasons for wanting the surgery.

Another topic I’d like to read more about is about teens and plastic surgery. By seeing what theglobalgirl is tagging, I can infer she has certain opinions on the female body image, and that plastic surgery is a negative thing. But, she still has bookmarked to useful sites. She led me to one, which talked about a preteen girl undergoing multiple procedures to lose weight. It is clear that preteen and teenage cosmetic surgery is a very circumstantial issue, and one that I will return to at a later date…

Theglobalgirl and I will surely continue our friendship. I look forward to turning to her for guidance in this confusing and cluttered Internet world, and am sure she will not steer me wrong.