Today, many ambitious young women in China feel they have to westernize their appearance through plastic surgery in order to get ahead. They undergo lengthy, painful, and expensive surgery and hospitalization, often financed by their parents who can ill afford it.

To accomplish the "right look," they visit surgeons to have their legs lengthened, their eyes westernized and their breasts enlarged. Some of the women end up with terrible physical problems as a result. Every week some 16,000 Chinese undergo face surgery. The film includes a beauty contest for "Miss Nip & Tuck," in which all the contestants are women who have had plastic surgery. Many of their families have spent their life savings to pay for this investment in their daughters. The winner's family paid over $3,000 (two years' salary) for her various plastic surgeries. The surgeons are happy to accommodate this business when one operation to lengthen legs costs $10,500. When one compares the attitude in China towards women during the Cultural Revolution when they were discouraged from dressing in anything but Mao jackets, the phenomenon is a startling illustration of China's rapid push into modernity.