Makeover Nation
Americans are opting for cosmetic surgery in record numbers. But do they know the risks?
Indeed, as the number of people pursuing perfection has increased, so has the number of people injured or killed. On May 14, the state of New York fined Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital $20,000 for "egregious violations" in safety procedures that led to the death of two women following plastic surgery, including Olivia Goldsmith, 54, author of The First Wives' Club. In Florida, the deaths of eight patients in the past 18 months prompted officials to impose a three-month ban on combined tummy tucks and liposuction. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now investigating 11 cases of rare, life-threatening infections after people traveled to the Dominican Republic for cut-rate cosmetic surgery. Rohrich says that half his patients are coming in to have body parts fixed, following botched surgery by someone else.
The notion that people can defy time and heredity, reshaping their bodies to suit their will, is hardly new. By the 16th century, surgeons were reshaping noses to disguise the telltale signs of syphilis. In the 1880s, surgeons lengthened Irish immigrants'"pug" noses to help them assimilate. After World War II, plastic surgeons who had honed their skills on the injured returned to help not only patients disfigured by accidents and disease but also those seeking face-lifts. Still, for most Americans, self-improvement remained a largely spiritual pursuit. In the past few decades, improved surgical techniques and new social attitudes have changed all that.
Society now puts more emphasis on looking good longer. "The system tells women they are more highly valued if they are young and thin," says Rebecca Ancheta, a San Francisco sociologist who has studied women's experiences with face-lifts. Indeed, baby boomers don't want to look the way their mothers did at 50. Nowadays, people get divorced and find themselves dating at 40, 50, 60.
People change jobs more often, too, and the competition can be 20 years younger. Even workplace demands have changed. "If you work on the assembly line at General Motors, no one cares how you look," says Lynne Luciano, an assistant professor of history at California State University and author of Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America . Now the job's more likely to be in the sales department. And nobody wants to buy from a jowly guy in a size XXL T-shirt.
Yet not all people seeking cosmetic surgery are boomers desperate to reclaim lost youth. Last year, 24 percent of those getting plastic surgery were under 35. Most of those simply have a body part they'd like to change. Linda Parker had always wanted to do something about her nose. "I felt it was too big for my face, growing up. It was a honker. It had to go." Finally, at age 38, she decided to have rhinoplasty surgery, otherwise known as a "nose job." She is African-American, and worried friends asked her if she would no longer look black."That is not the case. It's not like I have a Caucasian nose. It's just a good nose for my face." Indeed, where in years past minorities may have sought cosmetic surgery to appear more white or European, surgeons say they are now doing it for the same reasons as everyone else: to look good. "It's not taboo," says Parker, an office manager in Dallas. "I even went to a popular restaurant with my little drip pad under my nose, and I didn't turn a head."
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