The Keogh Report was triggered following the PIP breast implant scandal that impacted around 50 000 women within the UK. It exposed ‘woeful lapses in product quality, aftercare and record-keeping—widespread use of misleading advertising, inappropriate marketing and unsafe practices right across the sector’ (Department of Health and Social Care, 2013).
Standards of care post-Keogh continue to spiral downwards; regardless of the advent of three recent voluntary aesthetic/cosmetic registers, the added intervention by the Advertising Standards Agency and Committees of Advertising Practice and guidance issued by our mandatory regulators.
Within the aesthetic sector, it is estimated that around 90% of patients are women (British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons, 2015), with the numbers of men remaining at around 10%. In the foreword of his seminal report, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh wrote that ‘those having cosmetic interventions are often vulnerable—they take their safety as a given and assume regulation is already in place to protect them’ (Department of Health and Social Care, 2013).
By the time you read this editorial, the UK will be approaching the 2019 General Election; newly elected members of parliament will be taking up their seats in the Houses of Parliament. What will the Government be offering women in this eagerly anticipated coming decade of the 2020s? What is in the pipeline for the aesthetic sector; will we see more inertia, delay and a roaring silence from our regulators on any meaningful regulatory change?
100 years ago, women were roaring. The roaring twenties (1920–1929) was a decade of metamorphosis for women, many acts of Parliament were passed, with the ensuing legislation resulting in powerful changes affecting women, transforming their lives and their place in society.
In 1919, the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act was introduced, which allowed women access to the legal and accountancy professions, In 1921, unemployment benefits were extended to include allowances for wives, in 1923, the Matrimonial Causes Act made grounds for divorce the same for men and women and finally, at last, women were given equal voting rights to men in 1928 (CityWomen, 2014). The General Election of 1929, also known as the ‘Flapper Election’, was named after young women aged between 21–29, known as ‘flappers’, who were finally given the vote.
Today, women's equality is still right up there on the political agenda, with such issues as the gender pay gap, cuts to women's jobs in precarious sectors, such as social care and retail, and many are questioning why, in the 21st century, women are indeed still having to fight for equality.
If you are like me and want to see change for women in the new decade across the aesthetic board, then the only meaningful way change can be adopted is to apply political pressure on our newly elected MPs. You can easily find your MP by visiting Parliament's own website (https://members.parliament.uk/constituencies) and typing in your postcode. Visiting your MP is easy, they are required to hold regular surgeries within their constituencies; these are usually on a first come, first served basis, where you will consult with your MP face-to-face, something often denied to women accessing the aesthetic sector when using the unregulated and unaccountable whereby services may be delegated over to lay groups.
We can, and we must, protect the public. That is our duty as registrants, so let's make the next 10 years a safer decade for all those accessing the private aesthetic sector, but particularly for women. Let's roar loudly for underpinning legislation for our mothers, our sisters, our daughters and our wives.