Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Top Ten Famous Quotes about Beauty

At the end of the day, plastic and cosmetic surgeries are about beauty. Consequently, a solid 85 percent of patients receiving cosmetic plastic surgery are women.

The remaining 15 percent are guys who don’t care about beauty. Being guys, they are more concerned about the times when beauty was in the eye of the beer holder.

Take a look at what some of our most clever thinkers and writers have envisioned about female beauty. (Verses about so-called “male beauty” are never written because their visions are always too bleary.)

10. “I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?”
-Jean Kerr

9. BEAUTY, n. “That power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband."
- Ambrose Bierce

8. “Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.”
- Sophia Loren

7. "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I never saw true beauty until this night!”
- Romeo when he first sees Juliet

6. “Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age -- as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight."
- Phyllis Diller

5. “If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in a library?"
- Lily Tomlin

4. "Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder."
- Dr. Lawrence J. Peter

3. “Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense.”
- Kin Hubbard

2. “Never purchase beauty products in a hardware store."
- Miss Piggy

1.” She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.”
- Groucho Marx

Monday, October 29, 2007

The Top Five Strangest Spa Treatments

Caviar, Chocolate, Tea and Beer Hops

Beauty treatments seem to use up everything in the above average kitchen, including green and white tea, newspapers (The Aqua Vitae Spa in New York City offers a “Page Six Facial!”) Dead Sea salt, chocolate and beer in addition to “scrubs” using Bikini Sugar, cous-cous, sesame, ginger and sugar maple leaf.

Question: how did everybody get so dirty? And doesn’t scrubbing with soap and hot water work any more?

Anyhow, we’ve surveyed the offerings used in some day spas and medispas and found the following:

5th Strangest Spa Treatment: Beer pedicure

The Exsalonce Spa in Chicago says it will revitalize your tired dogs and even “work wonders” on calluses. Seems like a real strain on a vital and complicated system of supply at time when huge supplies of beer are urgently needed during the very height of football season.



4th Oddest Spa Treatment: Egyptian Mud

The MiSpa in Chicago imports mud from Egypt, presumably from the Nile River, and slathers it all over their clients’ bodies in the name of health. Meanwhile, Egyptians are laughing up their sleeves because the Nile has always been used for a sewer and they were stumped on how to get rid of the polluted mud until somebody offered to buy it.
Meanwhile, in Calistoga, Califonria, Mud Mujita is said to relieve the rigors or jet lag at Spa Solage’s mud bar.



3rd Most Off-The-Wall Spa Treatment: Chocolate Manicure

Offered by the DeFranco Spagnolo Salon in Great Neck, N.Y., the chocolate manicure is for when you are feeling like something sweet but you don’t want it to melt in your hand. Instead, it just melts all over your fingernails.



2nd Most Unusual Spa Treatment: Sweet Cheeks Derriere Facial.

The Detroit-area Euphoria Spa gives your other cheeks -- the ones you sit on -- exfoliation, then applies a masque, waxing and wraps it up with a warm paraffin treatment. Questions: After all that trouble and expense, do you really want to sit on it? And hide it? The YOUnique Medical Spa in Santa Monica, California, refers to this as “Booty Buffing,” which is a required process to -- and I quote -- “get your booty bikini and mini-dress ready.”



And the Number 1 Oddest Spa Treatment: Caviar Pedicure

Spa Newbury in Boston offers this tasty treat. Now, caviar probably will never replace more vital and substantial nutrition schemes like potato chips.

Nonetheless, some people like caviar on a cracker with lemon juice and some champagne. Or, you can do the next most obvious thing and just rub it all over your feet.

The spa’s owner seems to think caviar is somehow related to the skin on your feet and may nourish your tootsies. Or, perhaps there’s a cushioning effect while walking on caviar. It’s never worked for me because the little fish eggs always break, allowing gooey stuff to ooze out and totally mess up my socks.

A Mouse Grows Ears and Noses for Humans

It looks like a creature that got all mixed up going through Jeff Goldblum’s transporters in his version of the 1986 movie, The Fly.

But some of the most far reaching work by plastic surgeon researchers use hairless mice to grow human ears and noses. (NOTE: This is NOT PhotoShop. These are genuine scientific data!)



Scientists are asked to tip-toe around this lab mouse that is extremely sensitive to loud noise, thanks to the size of his extra ear.

Why do this at all? Some children are born without ears. Plus, new artificial noses are used for accident victims and, well, frankly, for people who have unwisely had too much plastic surgery on their snoozes. (Are you paying attention, Jacko?)

The best part is that the host mouse lives on once the new ear is removed from its back and sewn onto a human. The research takes place at the University of Massachusetts. Read more about how scientists grow human ears for donation on mice.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Cosmetic Surgery T-shirts

We noticed the wonderful article about men’s fashions on another hip blog, Beauty Chat.

It just so happened that some recent news about women’s fashions came our way. In particular, cosmetic surgery T-shirts.

You know something has really caught the fancy of the public when a street or a sandwich is named after it.

But that same item is as firmly established in the American culture as the 4th of July, Billy the Kid or the Liberty Bell when its name appears on a T-shirt.

Cosmetic surgery T-shirts were created by CosmeTees, a firm where designer and owner Lee Dequeira of Philadelphia observed something noteworthy about people who have plastic surgery.

They blab about it. While we ordinary mortals blithely stroll the malls with, say, plaster casts on our newly straightened noses, or huge bandages swathed around our heads due to freshly pinned back ears, celebrities do everything possible to hide their surgical rejuvenation.



(I Love My New Boobs, a toned down Tee for the less ostentatious.)

You’ve seen it all before where the celeb watchword is deny, deny, deny. Nobody uncovers this trend better than the blog awful plastic surgery.

(Here’s an example of the expressions on the Tee)



So Lee got to thinking. Why not just go with the Everyman flow and, since you’re telling anybody who will listen about your recent nip ‘n’ tuck, just boldly announce your enhancement on a special Tee? Like another one, just below:



Once you see the all-black Tees with the words spelled out in glittering rhinestones, you might get the shirts are intended to be brash. So the Tees don’t so much announce your rejuvenation surgery as shout it. The fashionable shirts go for $39.95 a pop.



So-o-o-o-o, depending on your particular surgical rejuvenation, you can wear a Tee that offers additional bold and brash statements, including:

• “Nipped/Tucked in the USA”

• “My PS is Better than Your PS (Plastic Surgeon)”

• ”I’m Under Construction”

• “It’s All About Me”

• ”Work in Progress”

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Top Five Urban Myths About Plastic Surgery

Has anyone ever told you an outlandish story, saying it happened to an uncle or a friend of a cousin while absolutely swearing it’s true? But it seems you could never track down the source of the story.

All too often, these told, retold and told yet again stories are urban myths. They just did not happen even though everybody believes them.

Consequently, we’ve set the filter to high on our high-tech plastic surgery news gathering gizmo and have uncovered the top five urban myths about plastic surgery.

PLASIC SURGERY URBAN MYTH NUMBER 5. Cher had her lowest pair of ribs surgically removed so she would have a true hour glass figure and tiny waist.

REALITY: Cher admits to having a lot of plastic surgery on her breasts and face but the ribs are really off limits. Other stars who have also been rumored to remove a rib or two include: Elizabeth Taylor, (“Hanoi”) Jane Fonda, Tori Spelling, Pamela Anderson, Janet Jackson and Britney Spears.

PLASTIC SURGERY URBAN MYTH NUMBER 4: NASCAR champ Kurt Busch had trouble getting his crash helmet on so he had an operation to pin his ears back.

BUSCH BEFORE



BUSCH AFTER


REALITY: While Busch’s helmet always fit just fine, thank you, Kurt did have otoplasty, cosmetic surgery on his ears just because he has always wanted to look better. Plus, he was getting married soon. Weddings probably cause more plastic surgery than all the television shows about cosmetic plastic surgery combined. It’s because wedding pictures are handed down for generations. Well, in at least 50 percent of the cases, if you factor in the current divorce rate. (My own thrifty, Great Depression survivor parents just took scissors and cut the despicable bride from the wedding pictures after the divorce.)


PLASTIC SURGERY URBAN MYTH NUMBER 3: If you can donate skin from your tummy tuck to the Shriner’s burn center for skin grafting, the Shriner’s will cover the cost of your procedure.



REALITY: Not true. For more about how urban myths can turn into an absolute flood of bogus email, stay on Dr. Oliver’s most excellent website, Plastic Surgery 101 and read about the numbers of misinformed people who write in on this topic.

PLASTIC SURGERY URBAN MYTH NUMBER 2: 73-year-old former astronaut Buzz Aldrin -- and the second person to walk on the face of the moon --recently had a face lift so his death mask would look handsome and because, if selected for a postage stamp, he would look good there, too.



REALITY: Buzz had a face lift O.K, but it had nothing to do with a death mask or postage stamps. Buzz says he has a “trophy wife” who is actually his same age but looks much younger. The moonwalker especially wanted his “droopy jowls” to look firmer.

AND THE TOP PLASTIC SURGERY URBAN MYTH: (that almost everybody believes!) A huge, muscular man had a hard time texting on his new iPhone due to his huge hands so he had plastic surgery on his thumbs to make them skinnier. Below, a six- footer grabbed onto the hand of the surgery patient in question just to show just how big his hands really are. And check out that giant thumb!




REALITY: Never happened. Plastic surgeons don’t offer a “thumioplasty” because there’s nothing to remove, lift, augment, nip or tuck. You need everything on your thumbs just where it is, exactly like Mother Nature designed it.

Monday, October 22, 2007

World’s 1st Breast Augmentation: Done in Exchange for Otoplasty

Back in 1962, a 30-year-old Texas woman allowed doctors to surgically place silicone implants into her sagging breasts. But the patient really wanted her large ears reduced. The patient, Timmie Jean Lindsey, then a young housewife with six children, agreed to go ahead with the breast procedure if the surgeons would later perform an otoplasty, the ear pinning operation.

The Daily Mail in London recently told Timmie Jean’s life story and showed the very first before and after breast augmentation photos.

Read more about the world’s first breast enlargement with implants.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Blog Watch

Read the Beauty Chat Blog to learn how Restylane is now being added to fashionable feet for extra padding while the first Botox only clinic has opened in NYC.
Plus, this is a great spot to stay current with the comings, goings and doings of Dr. 90210 surgeons.

Wendy Lewis, the “Knife Coach” probably knows more about plastic surgery that any other lay person. She has two anecdotes about how breast implants saved a couple of lives. In one case, a female Israeli soldier stopped a shard of shrapnel from an exploding shell when it struck her silicone implant. Her surgeon reported the shard would have otherwise gone into her heart. In the other case, after a head-on auto accident in Bulgaria, rescuers found a woman’s large (40DD) breast implants acted like airbags and prevented damage to her internal organs in the crash. The implants burst upon impact and, like the car, were a total loss.

Breast implants tripped up a murderer and solved a case



NYC detectives found a body packed inside a suitcase but had no clue about her identity. However, the woman had breast implants….which carry registration numbers. Now equipped with her identity, detectives then noticed a quack doctor lived close to where the body was found. A little more sleuthing revealed the doctor had already been busted for practicing medicine without a license. And when all the pieces were put together, they found the victim went to the see the doc on the day she disappeared and died under his “care” because of an unusual antibiotic reaction. The doctor then hid the body, never dreaming the woman actually carried registration numbers.

Dr. John DiSilva’s blog carries a video of a lineup of women (READ: top models) in bras. The idea is to spot the one or ones, if any, who’ve had breast augmentation. You have to sit through an obnoxious commercial before the somewhat surprising truth is revealed.

Plastic Surgery Gets Its Own Freeway!

In happier news: a recent development will speed things up in Beverly Hills, the world Mecca of plastic surgery.

So many people travel to and from Beverly Hills, a new-high speed thoroughfare has been built to insure the timely arrivals of surgical rejuvenation patients at their many destinations in and about the Golden Ghetto.

Pictured below is the Plastic Surgery Freeway. Of course, that moniker is slang -- the roadway’s real name is the Beverly Hills Freeway. Nonetheless, the thoroughfare features convenient off-ramps at Tummy Tuck Parkway, Rhinoplasty Place, Botox Circle, Dermabrasion Drive and other favorite motoring destinations.

(Well, O.K., we made up the part about the Plastic Surgery Freeway, but the rest of the column is totally true! The above picture is actually a ‘fridge magnet. ((Photo courtesy of stickergiant.com.)) But the Beverly Hills Freeway could be real some day, don’t you think?)

Plastic Surgery Research

What a world we have in modern medicine! Machines that perform heart surgery on a patient in outer space while the surgeon-operator remains on earth. Diagnostic machines that can show you crystal clear pictures of your brain’s insides. Not to mention plastic surgeons who can turn back the clock on just about any aging face or body.

How about this? A bit more low-tech to be sure but perhaps useful. Learned researchers working in certified ivory towers at a major university reveal that warts can be removed with duct tape. (My advice: just watch out for the quacking that goes along with using the tape!)



Warts Lost to Duck Tape



University of Minnesota researchers studied the old folk cure technique of covering warts with sticky, fibrous duct tape. Results? It only works a scant 21 percent of the time.

But researchers back in 2002 found the technique worked on the warts of young adults and children 85 percent of the time. That study was reported in a 2003 issue of American Family Physician.


The, ah, sticking point? The 2002 used gray duct tape which contains rubber. But the 2007 study used clear duct tape without rubber. It was a true eureka! moment in science. I can hear the television commercial for wart healing now: “Gray heals! Clear Flops!”

Said one of the researchers: “Theoretically, the rubber adhesive could somehow stimulate the immune system or irritate the skin to attack the wart in a different manner.”

One of the other researchers (we are not making this up) also told of a folk cure which worked for him when he was a mere lad: he found a slug and let it slither across his warts from right to left three times.


Want a preview of that commercial? “Get fast, fast relief from warts! Use Ajax Slugs! More Slime! More right-to-left crossings!”

A New Internal Bra

Women: ever get tired of misplacing your bras?

Medical science is hard at work on this pesky question.

While researchers worldwide have devised several types of internal bras, the latest is from noted Israeli plastic surgeon Eyal Gur who thinks his own design for an internal bra will be approved by this time next year. Oh yeah, not to forget: there’s another selling point: in addition to never losing your bra, you receive a breast lift too. Dr. Gur calls the coming procedure, “TheCup&Up.”

It works like this: Dr. Gur’s internal bra has a thin titanium frame implanted just under the skin. The gizmo also has silicone cups to hold the breasts up.

According to Dr. Gur, implanting an internal bra will be quick -- about 45 minutes -- and less invasive, requiring local anesthesia only. Compare that with today’s breast lifts which usually leave long scars and remove a lot of skin. The new procedure should be cheaper, too.

Not to mention the huge savings on bra bills.

Next -- Super high fashionable cosmetic surgery T-shirts for women.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Plastic Surgery Blog Watch

Current notable entries:

While we’re on the topic of feet: Check the Beauty Chat Blog to learn how Restylane is now being added to fashionable feet for cushioning. You’ll also see news of a Botox-only clinic. Plus, this is a great blog to stay current with the comings, goings and doings of television’s Dr. 90210 surgeons.

Dr. George Berka’s blog observes that cosmetic plastic surgery can improve your mood and even reduce the need for depression medication. You can find a longer take about how psychology, moods and Cosmetic Surgery are all intertwined in the article, Does Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery Cure the Blues? One patient in the article was thrown into many years of depression because she suffered a botched nose job. Unfortunately, it happens more often that you may think. So carefully, carefully check the doctor’s credentials. Here’s how.

Next time:
  • Breast implants that protected the owner in a car crash and another that stopped an exploding shell
  • Yet another breast implant (hint: it has a serial number) identified an unknown body
  • Plus, the Beverly Hills Freeway
  • New plastic surgery research. (Another hint: scientists have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the right kind of duct tape can cure warts!)

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Plastic Surgery Product of the Week Toe Stretchers: Now Over-the-Counter!

For all who are breathless about the aesthetic state of their tootsies and may be considering a foot facelift:
There is finally hope for anybody who suffers from dreaded maladies like turf toe or tiny toe syndrome (also known as stubby toe disorder.) The toe stretcher puts your little piggies back into proper shape and length -- and without expensive surgery!

But wait -- there’s more! According to the manufacturer, The Toe Stretcher additionally promises to align foot muscles, straighten bent toes, realign bones and increase circulation by performing Yoga on your toes. (Mantra not included.)

There’s only one downside: walking is a little tricky. In fact, you might not want to remain under treatment while driving because you would be too wobbly to walk a straight line if the police ever stopped you. And do we have to mention anything about watching out for broken glass? We think not!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Dental Appointment! Phone Home!



There’s a cool new way to be reminded about cosmetic or regular dental appointments. Instead of posting a note on the ‘fridge or jotting something on your already crowded calendar, you can have a reminder pop up on your cell.

Smile Reminder alerts you to upcoming dental appointments. Just give your cell phone number or email address to your dental receptionist and you’ll see timely -- if not altogether welcome -- reminders about those oh-so-easy to forget dentist appointments.

We’re also told your dentist will send electronic birthday and holiday greetings, thereby keeping your mind off any new schemes of pain avoidance. Of course, cosmetic dentists are a little different because you will really have something to show -- brand new pearly whites -- in return for what you’ve spent in cash, patience, worry and, yes, avoided and forgotten dental appointments.