Cosmetic Surgery

If you were forming a superhero team to combat the forces of gravity and old age, who would you choose?

 The San Diego Comic-Con is coming up this week, and it has me thinking about one of my favorite subjects: superheroes.  As a plastic surgery blogger, the medical topics that I’m supposed to cover rarely coincide with my geekier interests. But I’m going to take this opportunity and run with it! (or fly with it, or teleport with it, or….yeah never mind).

Let’s go through the roster!

Mr. Plastic – The obvious choice for leader. His elasticity is unparalleled, and we all know that elastic skin is youthful-looking skin. Wrinkles are wiped away!

Lipo Lass –Uses her suction power and her trusty cannula to stop low-life fat deposits from taking over various neighborhoods.  Has an on-again, off-again relationship with Tommy Tuck.

The Augmentator – His most common weapons are silicone and saline based. When he’s overseas he uses gummy bear implants to fight Dr. Flat Chest, his arch nemesis.

Captain Botox – As a child, Billy Bo always thought that his grandfather was mad at him even when he wasn’t. This traumatizing experience led to his rebirth as Captain Botox and his mission to eradicate brow furrows everywhere. The Captain is renowned for his terrifying toxin that can paralyze his enemies for up to 6 months at a time.

Small boobs, saggy skin, diabolical flab- your days are numbered. The Fantastic Plastics are here….to make the world a safer, better-looking place!

Not everyone has the cojones or the cash to get plastic surgery, but as the thriving beauty industry indicates, that doesn’t mean people are halting in their quests to fix their features. As plastic surgery becomes more popular, alternatives are springing up, many claiming to provide similar results with less pain and a whole lot less money. Take, for example, the Coco Beautiful New Look of Nose. While an outsider might label this nose clip a glorified plastic clothespin, some Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese businessman out there has saved thousands of dollars on rhinoplasty surgery by dutifully applying the $7.50 clip to his nose for hours each evening.

For individuals with aging faces who don’t want to shell out big bucks for facelift surgery, there’s always the Facial Flex Facial Exercise and Toning Kit, which allows you to exercise your facial muscles in much the same way as a gasping fish. As one user in the infomercial puts it, “Even if I don’t see any [results] quite yet, I know that something’s happening and I know that I will see something soon.” If one can halt the aging process by placebo effect alone, she’s got it made.

Of course, such desperate measures aren’t unique to our time. Even before the existence of plastic surgery, women especially looked for alternative ways to enhance, reduce, and lift their way to aesthetic glory. The Psycho-Expander was marketed around the turn of the century to “develop neck, chest, and shoulders to striking beauty” by doubling women’s breathing capacity (read: cup size) for “perfect breath control” (man control) by means of a harness strapped around the chest. At some point, a girl’s just got to look at herself, laden with nose clip, mouth wire, and boob harness and have this epiphany: just get the surgery.

It has been calculated that if a Barbie doll was a real woman, she’d be 7 feet tall with a 44 inch bust, 17 inch waist, and 40 inch hips.  Disproportionate, she wouldn’t be able to walk properly (a “life-sized” model of the plastic glamour-girl turned she-monster collapsed in half, unable to support her upper half).  Too thin, she wouldn’t have breasts or be able to menstruate, and she would be at risk for a heart attack and osteoporosis as early as in her twenties.

Despite her alarmingly unrealistic dimensions, women have continuously striven to adhere to the blonde, thin, busty standard of beauty that is Barbie.

51 year-old Cindy Jackson has adhered to this standard a bit much.  That is to say, literally.

Boasting the title “The Human Barbie,” Jackson has dedicated her life to becoming the physical incarnation of the doll.  With extensive work done to her breasts, knees, abdomen, thighs, nose, eyes, forehead, hairline, chin, lips, and skin, Jackson (not to be confused with the other surgery aficionado of the same appellation) has had over 47 cosmetic procedures.  She has even earned a Guinness World Record for her achievement.

Even stranger, Jackson has a rival for the title.  Sarah Barge, 47, of the UK, has had over 120 hours of surgery (and counting) on every visible body part except her feet in her own effort to become Barbie.

But at the end of a long day of defending her title and promoting her line of skin care products, Jackson returns to her “dream house” to the arms of her very own Ken.  Husband Steve Erhardt has himself had over thirty surgeries and spent over a quarter of a million dollars molding himself into Barbie’s—err, Jackson’s—other half.

Yes, boys, it happens to us too. It’s up to you to decide whether to embrace the signs of age as rugged manliness, or succumb to the cosmetic surgery revolution.

As you gaze longingly into the mirror, turning to this side, then the other, admiring those contoured biceps, flexing your sculpted pectorals, worshipping what you believe to be the Adonis-like proportions that make you a true man… you notice something around your eyes. Lines. Tiny little creases that look like the feet of a bird. And then the image of your sumptuous, youthful masculinity crumbles into a zillion little pieces as you realize that age could possibly be starting to rear it’s head on your very own… around the eyes to be precise.
Okay, so that’s the extreme scenario. But let’s face it, guys, we can be just as afraid of nature’s effects as our female counterparts, and it can hit us like a monster-truck when we first notice it.

Many men aren’t concerned at all with how they look, but a great number of males these days partake of the metrosexual aesthete, dressing well and lookin’ hot.

One option for men freaking out about crows feet is cosmetic surgery, such as brow lift, dermal wrinkle fillers (BOTOX® Cosmetic, Juvederm™, etc.) and others. These can be effective in smoothing out the wrinkles and giving your face a more youthful sheen.

But remember, gentlemen, cosmetic enhancement is a major decision that should not be made lightly. And as we age, the signs will continue to come back.

Also, keep in mind, some of those extra lines don’t just signify age, to some, they read as experience, wisdom, intellect, and sexiness. The rugged-looking male can be incredibly attractive to both sexes, so don’t be too quick to get rid of those well-earned fine lines… they may make you an even bigger hit than you were before.

A popular website, myfreeimplants.com has been getting a lot of international media attention. In a cynical nutshell, this new site is where men and women can gather together to support each other’s hopes and dreams.

For the ladies, it’s the promise of confidence and self assurance in the form of free breast implants. For the men, it’s economically priced porn and the possibility of cheap cyber sex.

These are the kind of capitalistic values that have made our country truly great.

Think of it as MySpace with a twist. On this site, ladies can sign up, create a profile, blog, post photos, and request live chats with one of the more than 7,000 men who are members of the site. For a donation, a guy can chat with one of the girls, exchange messages, or request *ahem* photos. Those donation credits (minus about 15 percent for the company’s costs), go into an account for the individual woman. After several months, there is enough money in the account for about 400cc’s of silicone.

Although the site allows nudity on profiles, it does not promote porn, and will not allow the proverbial “crotch shot” on profiles. But it doesn’t discourage sharing pornography either. According to the rules of the site, when it comes to sending photos of yourself to benefactors, “Anything goes!”

After the ladies have reached their donation goals, they are allowed to choose a doctor and the site’s administrators will send that doctor a check in the specified amount.

Stay tuned for an in-depth investigative story, hereafter titled, “How I Got My Boobs for Free.” Or possibly, “My Disappointed Parents.”

Number one: I’m not a woman.
Number two: Every person’s body is his/her own temple, and has the right to accentuate his/her own body as he/she sees fit.

That said, I do have opinions, particularly when it comes to plastic surgery among our celebrity-set. A recent article in an on-line entertainment magazine contained an interview with Courtney Cox in which she stated she wouldn’t mind some plastic surgery as she gets older, but the hubby, David Arquette, is not so keen on the idea. This got me to thinking: from everything I’ve read and heard, Diane Keaton has never had plastic surgery, is in her 60’s, and looks incredible. Same with Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep. These are some of the most talented, hardest-working actresses in the world, single-handedly defying the antiquated, horrifically unfair notion that women past 40 are washed up in Hollywood. The overwhelming pressures on women, particularly in the entertainment industry, to be thin, beautiful, young, and perfect ALL THE TIME overshadow the fact that women can and do grow older gracefully. In my opinion, any man or woman worth his/her intellectual, emotional, and enlightened salt can attest that brains, wisdom, culture and care for natural beauty trumps collagenized lips, tightened faces, and botoxed brows any day.

Again, I’m not a woman so I can’t possibly understand the pressures they are under. But as a dude who recognizes the beauty and wonder that is woman, I say don’t do it Courtney. You’re too fabulous to ever need it.

Sweet Stephanie Tanner is Finally All Grown Up!

The latest in early 90s sitcom news is Jodie Sweetin. Well. More accurately – Jodie Sweetin’s huge rack. Clearly back on crack, Sweetin’s sweetheart image has once again been sullied after she appeared all over Hollywood sporting a new set of knockers. And to be clear, these implants are not intended to add an aesthetic sense of proportion to her slight frame. No, these boobs were exploding out of her shirt like fleshy fireworks… The kind that make your dog hide under the bed and whimper. Her pink top strained at the seams trying to contain them.

This surgical decision on her part bears several questions for me: For one, has she fallen off the proverbial wagon? What woman would need attention so badly that she would be willing to put two 5-pound sacks of silicone into her chest? Unless you’re planning on letting someone build a summer home in your cleavage, I see little to no benefit to breast implants so large that they could dictate their own gravity.

And then… I am drawn to the more philosophical aspects of this “development”: Can breast implants really be too big?

Based on thorough research (or… a Google search that returned a lot of porn), there are many doctors out there who specialize in placing larger breast implants for a more “dramatic effect.” Apparently, you can get up to 1000cc breast implants, which would be the equivalent of DDs. But seriously, who actually goes and gets them? I think that large of an implant should be reserved strictly for strippers and real estate agents. There needs to be some sort of employment criteria for that much silicone… And honey, I am pretty sure you haven’t worked since you were 13.

As we sit shiva on Full House’s loveable Stephanie Tanner, I hope we can remember her as an angelic little girl who grew up, went on a meth binge, and made some poor plastic surgery decisions. Maybe the real lesson here is that you should never listen to Uncle Jesse.