Ad Feminem

That Bathing Suit We Shouldn't Have to Die to Buy

In light of all the recent stories of women like Stephanie Kuleba, Donda West and Olivia Goldsmith losing their lives during or as the result of cosmetic procedures, I thought I'd post the following.  It's since been removed from the website, but was originally posted on the website for the Genetic Institute for Anti-Aging (an "aesthetic medicine" and cosmetic surgery clinic) when their URL was still just www.stopmyaging.com.  The GIAA no longer uses that address other than to redirect to their new URL www.getyournewlook.com, which is appropriate, if you think about the fact that in the most morbid of ways, death on the operating table is one sure way to stop aging. 

Q: Dr. Jazayeri, If I am overweight, how can I improve my figure?
A: The great news is that a great figure is very attainable with plastic surgery. We have all tried to exercise, go on never ending diets and we still can't get into that bathing suit that we are dying to buy. Procedures such as liposuction, tummy tuck, breast augmentation and breast reduction can all help you to attain that great figure. (Emphasis mine.)

Despite Jazayeri's flippant figure of speech, women truly are dying to fit into the right bathing suit.  Perhaps they're pushed along by comments like the kind made by "renowned plastic surgeon to the stars" Dr. Robert Rey while hawking his Shapewear line as an "Affordable, Painless Alternative to Plastic Surgery" on HSN.  Rey, whose obvious pride in his wife's 90-lb physique is tempered by his claim that even she looks better wearing one of his waist-cinching products, claims that every woman has an unattractive "poof" around the middle - even the 6'-tall, 120 lb supermodels he knows. 

That's right.  According to Dr. Rey, there's not a single woman alive who naturally has the "right" figure.  Not even supermodels and 90-lb anorexics are thin enough. Or shapely enough.  It's a losing battle, ladies - unless of course, you buy some Shapewear, or you lie down on the operating table.  And if you never get off that table again, or you starve yourself to death in the process - hey, look on the bright side - at least you won't be fat anymore. 

How many women have to die before we stop privileging an unnatural physique?

[get this widget]

Singapore Slings New Lipo Regulations

Earlier today, Singapore announced a long-awaited tightening of regulations on liposuction: according to draft regulations, patients will have to sit out an 15 day cooling-off period before the procedure can be carried out, and doctors will be required to meet minimum standards for specific training.

Regarding the 15 days, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said: "We think this period is useful, otherwise, some operators might hard sell and force the customer to go and lie down and do it immediately.”

In order to be certified to carry out the procedure, doctors would be required to undergo at least a year of general surgical training and also receive specific instruction on liposuction. While this falls well short of the board-certification requirements for plastic surgeons, it would at least improve the training levels of general practitioners posing as cosmetic surgeons.

The draft regulations have met with much debate. A notable voice in favor has proven to be that of liposuction's inventor, Professor Yves Illouz, who points out that allowing untrained doctors to carry out the procedure was a "disaster" in his native France, resulting in 65 deaths.

[get this widget]

How Old is Beautiful?

Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche has slammed the Hollywood-driven definition of beauty, deriding it as being a simple combination of "youth and big breasts. "In France," continues the Binoche, 44, "beauty is much more subtle - and there is a greater acceptance of age." She also criticizes the growth of cosmetic surgery (ab)use among American actresses of uncertain age: "Botox makes people look older. You look at women who have had it, you see the fear of ageing on their face."

Binoche's view is one that resonates not just with Europeans, but also with those taking a deeper look at the impact of Hollywood's beauty culture and its offshoots, those unreal Orange County-centric reality shows.

Maggie Little, a bioethicist at Georgetown University sums up the prevalent US definition of beauty well: “The notion of what we’re supposed to look like comes from celebrities and it’s really distorted,” she says. “As a culture, we’ve developed this very narrowed view of beauty — only one decade, the 20s.”

FHM Magazine published its list of the world's 100 sexiest women today. The average age of the top ten choices, all Hollywood actresses (could there possibly be a sexier profession?), is  26.

[get this widget]

Germany to Ban Teen Cosmetic Surgery

Deputies from Germany's dominant Social Democratic Party (SDP) laid the groundwork for a legislative ban on cosmetic surgery for teens, Wednesday. Rising numbers of medically unnecessary procedures for minors is cited as the reason to introduce the new law.

"I believe that the beauty ideal, mostly for teenagers but also for children, has gone astray," said SDP health expert Karl Lauterbach according to an AFP report. The German Federation of Paediatricians supports the ban, while unsurprisingly, the German Society for Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery is rather less enthusiastic.

[get this widget]

U.S. Plastic Surgery Groups Fail Minors

Following up on yesterday's story about Australian bans on plastic surgery for minors, it is fast becoming clear that surgeons' groups here in the USA have no plans to follow suit. Or to even consider the matter.

The American Medical Association, which has no policy positions on under 18s according to a spokeswoman, and does not plan to even consider the pros and cons of a ban, despite the skyrocketing numbers for cosmetic procedures ranging from breast augmentations to botox.

The American Society for Plastic Surgeons has no formal position on surgery for minors, and neither does the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. The latter states: "Most experts agree that for appropriately selected teenage patients, cosmetic plastic surgery can have a positive impact on physical and emotional development." But a spokeswoman declined to cite references for those experts.

Watch this space as we look further into training and guidance provided to accredited plastic surgeons with regard to minors (or the lack thereof) . Oh and remember, a doctor doesn't have to have any special training or be board certified in order to call him or herself a plastic surgeon.

[get this widget]

Australian Bans on Teen Procedures

The Australian state of Queensland has banned cosmetic surgery procedures for under 18s, a move lauded by the doctors of the Australian Medical Assocation. New South Wales had already planned to implement a three month “cooling off” period on decisions by teens to undergo cosmetic surgery starting July 1 and may now go further.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) NSW branch president Dr Andrew Keegan said a cooling-off period was "heading in the right direction", but a total ban was preferable when it came to teenagers.

"We'd have them leaning toward making it even tougher for young people to get surgery," Dr Keegan said.

"I think the possibilities of a ban need to be considered."

Dr Keegan said he worried teenagers were seeking physical solutions to what may be psychological problems.

"There is a psychological dimension involving body image in the impulse to seek cosmetic surgery," he said.

"If you've got low self esteem, then you have to have your self esteem improved - you don't need some kind of reconfiguring."

New South Wales already has already banned breast augmentations and rhinoplasties on minors from its public hospitals. Most significant, in a country known for its beach culture and embrace of active lifestyles, is the recognition of the need to protect the immature against a culture of profiteering by surgeons pushing cosmetic procedures as a psychological shortcut amid a culture of unrealistic physical perfection. Further recognizing the unique nature of cosmetic surgeons as aggressively seeking to sell procedures to the imperfect, NSW is also calling for advertising to include information regarding the reality of  those ubiquitous before and after pictures.

In the USA meanwhile, 2007 provided a bumper crop of breast augmentations for the under-18 set, with cosmetic surgeons reaping over $40 million, a 260% increase on 2006’s total. In the US, there is a ban on augmentations From KMBC's reporting on a teen who died as a result of the surgery:

The Food and Drug Administration doesn't approve breast augmentation for patients under 18. However... there are plastic surgeons who ignore the 18-and-under warning.

Indeed, the FDA does not approve of breast augmentation for under 18s. But this FDA disapproval also comes with loopholes big enough to render it meaningless.

"As in most cases, the devil will be in the details," said Dr. Thomas J. Gampper, vice chair of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "The law allows procedures to correct deformities would be allowed [sic], along with undefined procedures to help a teenager's medical, psychological or social well-being. Those three exceptions are the reasons for the vast majority of all our adult cosmetic procedures, so theoretically, it may not ban any procedures on teens."

The FDA's regulations have been in place since 2000. The loopholes allow for saline implants to be inserted into the breasts of minors for reconstruction and to correct asymmetry.  And the regulations were put in place, there has been a four-fold  increase in the number of breast augmentations for minors. The figures for breast reductions, also genuinely used to to correct asymmetry, have remained constant.

While bigger breasts for teenagers have become big business, the numbers for otoplasty (ear surgery) and rhinoplasty (nose surgery) have declined.

[get this widget]

Your Yucky Body - Mommy Makeover Edition

Cartoon by Michaela B. Reid.  Originally posted here.

[get this widget]

Yoho-ho and a Bottle of Sense

Dr. Robert Yoho's cosmetic surgery ad sits poised above Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills.  It's the sort of thing that, in the context of this blog, we're usually ready to criticize.  Besides cosmetic surgeons, what other type of doctors, we'd ask, would advertise?  While we might see ads for opthamologists and dentists - those who perform routine, non-major medical procedures, neither the oncologist nor the trauma surgeon nor the burn specialist could ethically hope for skyrocketing "business growth" as cosmetic surgeons do because that growth would mean a hope for more cancer, more  grotesque accidents, more fires. 

Dr. Yoho's is admittedly a tastefully done billboard, more overtly art than ad. On the other hand, it's possible to argue that the torso-only snapshot of the woman reduces her - as so much misogynist rhetoric does - to her component parts, a headless, limbless rubber love doll - sexual organs only, minus legs for mobility, a face with a mouth for speaking or a head with a brain.

But happily, after spending some time reading Dr. Yoho's website, this is one doctor we'd rather commend than condemn.  That's not to say that we've become comfortable with cosmetic surgery advertising or a culture obsessed with an unattainable ideal, which we decidedly have not.  At all.  However, Dr. Yoho, unlike so many of his colleagues, seems refreshingly frank.  While still marketing his services, Yoho has done so in a way which suggests less a fatuous drive for profit or a push for patients to make impulsive and/or excessive life-altering decisions than it suggests a concern for transparency, common sense and informed decision-making.  He says:

Because this is elective or voluntary surgery, the patient is responsible to a large extent for what gets done. But the doctor should refuse inappropriate requests and counsel the patient regarding potential problems. You must bear in mind two other factors when you're dealing with doctors. First, most surgeons love to do surgery of any kind. Second, although most doctors try to put the patient first, they have financial pressures. And patients are very trusting. So if the doctor leaves you with any negative feelings about your procedure, you should listen carefully. He's doing his job and he has your best interests at heart. I'll never forget what one of my mentors, Dr. Bill Cook, once said in a lecture: "Patients will trust you to do anything, so you've got to learn to say 'no.'"

When you go out to a nice restaurant, you don't eat everything on the menu. By the same token, at the doctor's office, you don't need to have every cosmetic surgery under the sun. You'll do better if you control yourself and exercise some common sense. Be careful out there.

What is sadly surprising is Dr. Yoho's concession regarding doctors' "financial pressures," i.e. their  prioritizing of profit over people - not something many will openly admit.  Some other things we like about Dr. Yoho:  his emphasis on diet and exercise and his admission that diet and other medical advances "may soon overshadow cosmetic surgery for their anti-aging effects" and "may have more effect on your shape than liposuction"; he also makes a point of saying that while the goal of cosmetic surgery is to improve your self-esteem, it won't change your life.  For once, here is rhetoric that does not conflate the body with the self.  Consistently, his clinic is called "New Body Cosmetic Surgery Medical Center," not "New You Cosmetic Surgery Medical Center."

If we must live a culture which blithely accepts cosmetic surgery and its advertisement, then better (in a lesser evil sort of way) that it's done like Dr. Yoho does it than the used-car hustler on the radio hawking discount boobs and a new life. 

[get this widget]

Sticks and Stones

Plastic surgeries are turning people into freaks. 

At least, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment directing the recent discourse on cosmetic surgeries.  Both Mary McNamara's recent piece in the LA Times and Mimi Spencer's piece in The Guardian say it:  too many plastic surgeries are making people look weird.  And readers agree.  McNamara's piece engendered so many responses that she wrote another piece about the responses - which ranged from expressions of relief and gratitude for her willingness to finally discuss the elephant on the TV screen to knee-jerk responses like this one from "Frank:"

I think the shows, movies and media should humiliate and lable these cosmetic surgery freaks to encourge that you have problems if you change your apperence. They should point out that those people are fake. All the shows are doing is encourging comsmetic surgery buy not pointing it out to the public. [sic]

It's this kind of response that misses the point. Humiliating people, labeling them as freaks and weirdos, insisting that their appearance adhere to one culturally determined norm - all of these behaviors are what led us down the plastic path in the first place.  Elective cosmetic surgery rates only skyrocket among people desperately afraid to be "freaks," "weird," "fat" or "ugly," and we can only try not to be those things if we know what they look like - and if our culture relentlessly tells us that they are us.  Rather than let the discourse devolve into simple binary oppositions - ugly vs. beautiful, freak vs. normal - we need to see that setting up those binaries is what causes the damage.

As McNamara acknowledges, our discourse needs to move beyond the gotcha of "did she/didn't she?  So much of this discourse assumes that surgery is simply a matter of a woman's choice in an environment that endeavors to remove her choice in the matter altogether by casting beauty (specifically, the kind achieved through cosmetic surgery) as health, thus casting aging, or its visible signs, as sickness or disease - which of course can be "cured" through cosmetic surgery.  Physical idiosyncrasies or deviations from the ideal are also recast as congenital defects (viz. the FDA's approval for breast augmentations for under-18-year-olds "in cases of congenital defects, including asymmetry") which can also be "cured" by surgery. 

Perhaps rather than seeing these people as freaks, we should see them as wearing our culture on their sleeves - or more accurately, on their faces and on their chests.  They quite literally embody our culture, having imbibed it and inscribed it on their skins. Far from being freaky, their behavior can be seen as a reasonable response to a culture of static categories, the romanticizing of perpetual adolescence, an inevitable result of exposure to ubiquitous airbrushed images and a capitulation to advertising's constant refrain of consumer inadequacy.  Overdone plastic surgery patients like Priscilla Presley aren't weird; they're the pitiful result of all of the above.  What's weird is a culture which denies plurality, mindlessly pursues profit and condones the constant promotion of an unattainable standard at the expense of our health and our selves.

[get this widget]

Mom's Gift of Birthday Boobs

This just in courtesy of the UK's Daily Mail, serving double duty as further convincing evidence of the newspaper's slide into the tabloid gutter. The daughter of glamour model and tell-all phenom Alicia Douvall wants mom to buy her a boob job. Mom intends to oblige. The kicker?  Daughter Georgia is not yet thirteen.

In all fairness, Alicia, already a veteran of more than 50 cosmetic surgery procedures at age 28 - including one breast implant that exploded and saline-pump valves to enable variable sizes- intends her daughter to wait until her sweet 16 for a pair of bigger breasts.  By that age, she will certainly not be alone in having the work done. Of more interest, perhaps is the casual attitude, engendered by Alicia's experiences, to elective slicing, filling and stitching displayed by young Georgia:  "I think my mum looks good. Because of her, I think it's normal to have surgery if something's not quite right."

Can anyone tell us just what "quite right" is?

Below, a photo of mother and daughter. The Daily Mail used the story as an opportunity to post various pictures of Mom in states of undress. You can go there to see them.

[get this widget]