Summary: Today's English listening practice is about plastic surgery. I tell you about the plastic surgery culture of Dubai. For vocabulary, expressions, and idioms see the transcript and vocabulary list. Q1) What is unusual about the plastic surgery clinics in Dubai? Q2) What problem do I have wearing contact lenses in Dubai? Q3) In what way is my tooth similar to other people in my family? Q4) What important realisation did I have? (Answers are at the bottom of the page) -------------- Do you ever look in the mirror and dislike what you see? I can be very self-critical at times. I look in the mirror and on some days I will search to find something to dislike about myself. I get really close to the mirror and I scrutinise my face, I look at it very closely until I find something I don't like in my reflection, in my face. Of course I know this is utter nonsense - this is a very stupid thing to do. It serves no purpose at all. The only thing it does is make me feel bad about the way I look. Sometimes I pick a spot on my face, I squeeze whatever pimples I can find, and then I will feel and look much worse. This is self-destructive behaviour. It's not a clever thing to do but it seems to me that most people are self-destructive sometimes. They might smoke, they might eat junk food, they might be too lazy to study... there are many ways a person can be self-destructive. When I moved to Dubai I immediately noticed that there are a lot of plastic surgery clinics here. It is easy to change the way you look - just visit one of the clinics. The plastic surgery clinics are in houses. They don't look like hospitals, just regular houses. I wonder, does this make having surgery seem even more normal to people? Does it suggest that having plastic surgery is nothing serious... Does it suggest that to to go under the knife, to have surgery on your face or body, is no big deal? You don't even need to go to a proper hospital! Don't like the way you look? Get a trout pout - make your lips bigger. A trout is a river fish with a really big mouth. You don't feel sexy? Have a boob job - make your breasts bigger. Boobs is a slang word for breasts. Looking old and wrinkly? Get rid of your wrinkles, the lines on your face with some botox injections. The plastic surgery culture here must be catching. We say something is catching when it is infectious like a disease. I must have caught the plastic surgery bug, the plastic surgery infection. My first idea was to have laser eye surgery. I told myself it was necessary because wearing contact lenses is a hassle, it's annoying, here. My contact lenses get very dirty from the sand in the air. They are not as comfortable to wear as they were in London. Also, the sunlight is very bright here. It is much better to be able to wear sunglasses, to protect my eyes from the sun. Laser eye surgery is essential, if you live here, it really is. My second idea was to get laser surgery on my skin. I have so many horrible spots on my face. I also have ugly large pores on my skin. Skin pores are very small holes on the surface of the skin, everybody has them but mine are much bigger and uglier. If I were to laser my face, I wouldn't have these horrid holes anymore. And obviously, my life would be better. And then I decided to look into getting braces for my teeth. I was going to see how much it would cost to straighten my teeth. I’d already had braces when I was fourteen years old. They were painful, food got stuck in my teeth, and I constantly had mouth ulcers - mouth ulcers are cuts inside your mouth. After the train tracks - that's a slang word for braces - were removed I had perfect teeth for a couple of years. I was often complimented. People told me I had amazing teeth. That was nice food for my ego. Then, slowly, imperceptibly - so slowly that the change was not noticed, my teeth returned to exactly the same position they had before the braces.
