Forget the weird cosmetic things happening in Florida (dentists performing breast augmentations, surgeons putting in used implants, etc.), now a Manhattan gynecologist is jumping on the cosmetic bandwagon. Apparently it’s not enough to do pap smears and deliver babies, the big bucks are in coming up with new cosmetic procedures to market to everyone with a pair.

The vagina appears to be the new frontier for cosmetic medicine.  There’s a whole array of proceduress that the good gyno has designed just for us.  Dr. Romanzi (in a New York Times interview with Natasha Singer) claims that she’s focusing on helping women with bladder issues post-babies, but what it really sounds like is she’s targeting women that will do anything to obtain and retain a man.  The main focus seems to be on strengthening Kegel muscles (like the fancy gyno exam to determine how strong you are), and making the area look pretty.  Am I missing something?

Not all gynecologists have felt the need to explore cosmetics. One doctor even seemed to have his head on straight: “Dr. Berenson questioned whether healthy women need any kind of pelvic strengthening or cosmetic procedure.”  Thank goodness that someone’s out there telling women to leave well enough alone.  Dr. Romanzi’s using face lasers to make the vulva look “better” and she claims that they’re just fine on that area even though there’s no research to support that. So there are a few reasons why other OB/GYN’s are cautious about Phit (Pelvic Health Integrated Techniques) www.theperfectphit.com.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m completely happy just leaving that area alone until some type of medical intervention is deemed necessary…oh, like CANCER, or I’m urinating when I sneeze (I’ve heard that happens, and I’m hoping to avoid)! I’m not even sure that I get “vaginal rejuvenation”. The whole idea of tightening things, makes me think that an inevitable rip, tear, or just plain pain, is in my future.

What about you?  Will you be working “pelvic fitness” into your schedule any time soon?

~Kacey

After a little persuasion from my husband and a few close family members, I finally decided to join Facebook last week.  Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

What I didn’t realize about Facebook before I signed up, was that it is much more then just putting up a profile, uploading pictures and getting back in touch with old friends.  Facebook includes hundreds if not thousands of “applications” that you actually “add” to your page. The applications are anything from adding “the quote of the day” to your page, to adding little “stickers,” various quizzes that you can take to test your knowledge on different subjects, to sending and receiving various “gifts” to and from your friends. The “gifts” include anything from flowers, to little hatching eggs, to drinks, to “karma.”

As I was learning the ins and outs of Facebook over the last two weeks, I was browsing the pages of my friends, and to my surprise and shock, one of my friends had received various “boobies” from her friends. I learned quickly that people are sending each other photos of different breasts and adding the photos straight to their page.  After my shock wore off a bit, I decided to take a closer look at this facebook “application.” In order to do this, I had to add the application to my page. So, I pressed the button to add the application, did my research, and quickly deleted the application before anyone noticed that I added it.  What I found through my five minutes of  research was that there were about 45 different types of “boobies” that you could send and receive. A few of the boobies included the following:

Motivational Boobies

Fake Boobies (though ALL of the boobies were fake, so I really didn’t get that one.)

Sporty Boobies

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I found this particular application extremely annoying, to say the least. Who, but an immature teenager would think receiving and sending photos of fake breasts is interesting, cool, or “okay” for that matter? Aren’t we inundated with fake breasts ENOUGH? What is this teaching the millions of teenagers that are part of Facebook, that women’s bodies and breasts are just objects? Come on Facebook, you can do better.

US News and World report has an article regarding teens at the age of 18 getting plastic surgery.  This is something that we have all heard before and in some cases, this has been deadly!

The article states  ‘Several factors are important in deciding when and for whom surgery is appropriate: an ability to understand the procedure; that the desire for surgery does not reflect what a parent, friend, or boyfriend desires; and that expectations are realistic’. 

‘If your expectations aren’t realistic and you have low self-esteem or no friends, cosmetic surgery is not the right answer. Rather, I would recommend counseling’.

Personally I think this is good advice for all women no matter what age.  Many women have low self esteem and decide to go under the knife to enhance body parts that they don’t feel comfortable with.  They are also made to believe that what they are doing is safe.    

The article also mentions the FDA guidelines that teens under 22 can only be implanted with saline implants and must be 22 if they want silicone gel.  Something the FDA has decided on that really never made sense to me.  Will 4 years really make a difference???  I doubt not.  Implants do not know your age!  If you are going to have complications, they will happen whether you are 18 or 35 and we have seen that women become ill from both saline implants and silicone gel. 

I would like to add as well that I was 35 when I decided on breast augmentation.  Yes, I had low self esteem and did this because I felt too thin.  I also did my ‘homework’ and found nothing indicating that saline implants were dangerous to your health.  I have since learned that this is not the case at all.  I think the best thing for me would have been counseling and going to the gym to build up those area’s of my body I didn’t feel comfortable with.  No, this would not have increased my breast size but it certainly would have made me feel better about myself.  I think about that often and wondered why no one ever suggested that to me.  Maybe this is what these teens should be doing instead of lipo at age 18.  Really, we need to concentrate more on eating healthy and exercise.  I bet most teens and adults would not need lipo if they changed their diet and excercised on a regular basis. 

It would be nice if parents encouraged their teens to eat healthy and exercise on a regular basis and I don’t mean to a point that it becomes obsessive as this can be a problem as well.  I think that 18 is just too young to be thinking about enhancing your body using cosmetic surgery to achive that.  Also, these parents should also be educated on the dangers and lets not forget to reassure our teens that the body God has given them is perfect and does not need altering in any way.  This will all lead to a healthy outlook in the future and acceptance of their bodies. 

Lastly, I do believe this article makes some good points regarding plastic surgery and teens, I just don’t agree with all of it. 

 Beth

I recently read this blog from Hilary Magazine regarding Karolina Kurkova being too fat!  I really looked at this picture and thought if she was any thinner, she would look anorexic. 

I’m reading words describing her body as ‘fat’, ‘chubby’, ‘love handles’ ‘cellulite’. 

Well, I looked and looked and I sure don’t see anything but a beautiful healthy looking woman.  Our society puts so much pressure on women in particular to look like sticks with big boobs.  Ewww, but that to me is just not attractive. 

Shame on you Brazil for putting so much pressure on women! 

Beth

I was absolutely delighted to see this blog published in the OC Register today. The blog was written by Colin Stewart and is called “Breast Implants are like cell phones – much loved, but a problem.” Colin starts off his blog by pointing another interesting blog, which was written in the Freakonomics section of the NY Times on June 18th. He points out that it wasn’t so much the blog itself that was interesting, but the barrage of comments that came after the blog was published that struck everyone’s interest! Women were coming out of the “woodworks” to share their thoughts about breast implants, including their major life-altering health problems stemming from breast implants. I’m sure that the NY Times and Dr. Zenn (the plastic surgeon that was interviewed for the NY Times blog) had no idea what was to come after this blog was published. Women attacked Dr.Zenn’s comment on the safety level of breast implants. The author of the NY Times blog asked Dr. Zenn which implant is safer, silicone or saline, and if all of the concerns surrounding breast implants were all hoopla. Dr. Zenn answered that silicone and saline implant have the same level of safety, and that yes the concerns are all hoopla. Women who have actually had/have breast implants implanted into their bodies had quite the difference in opinion!

Colin then goes on to wittily point out the similarity in cell phones and breast implants. He points out that both are embraced by enthusiastic consumers who are willing to overlook the problems they cause. Colin says “With cell phones, the problems tend to be dropped calls and inaudible conversations. With breast implants, the problems range from minor flaws in breast appearance to major health crises that require medical intervention.”

Last year alone, 30,000 women removed their Breast Implants. To me, THAT alone is reason to be concerned over a “medical device.” There is a reason that these women removed their implants. I’d like to know when the medical community (independent from plastic surgeons and implant manufacturers) is going to start studying WHY so many women are removing their implants. I’d also like to see some long-term, independent studies on what the true health concerns are with breast implants. There are too many women who are having problems and serious health concerns. This issue simply cannot be over-looked, pushed aside and ignored any longer. Women deserve to know the truth. We deserve to know exactly what we are getting ourselves into when we choose to enlarge our breasts with silicone. 

Beauty and The Breast would like to thank Colin Stewart for giving both sides to this very controversial issue. All too many times, publications, websites and articles only share the opinions and beliefs of the plastic surgery community, and never bother sharing the opinions of the women who have been harmed by breast implants.

It seems as though some of these Doctors are willing to come up with anything in order to insert silicone in our bodies.   Of course we all know about silicone gel breast implants but (no pun intended) there are people having their butt’s enlarged and men having their abs looking like a washboard with implants as well but when I read this article, I thought what else??? 

Come on, a scalp lift that entails inserting some sort of silicone implant into the top of the head to appear taller?  This is really crazy not to mention very dangerous.  This world is so obsessed with everything relating to our looks including our height. 

I can’t help but wonder how long before his hair stops growing in that spot and he starts to develop brain fog or worse yet, autoimmune disorders, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue and the list goes on. 

Now is this really worth all the risks just to be a few inches taller?  I wonder if he was warned of all the dangers in doing this procedure?  I doubt not as the article quotes Dr Luis de la Cruz as saying “It is a relatively simple procedure that can have a wonderfully positive effect on the patient’s life”.  I know that my breast augmentation sure didn’t have a ‘wonderfully postitive effect on my life’. 

A spike in the unemployment rate - the biggest in more than two decades, oil prices up to nearly $150 a barrel, the dollar has lost tremendous value against the euro and the yen, homes in foreclosure crossing the 1 million mark during the first quarter of 2008, a record high. Yes yes, we all know by now that the current U.S economy has taken a terrible downturn and is headed for a possible recession. As Americans are “feeling in the pinch,” more and more are tightening their wallet strings and opting out of purchasing discretionary items.  Cosmetic surgery is like any other discretionary item. Because of that, cosmetic surgery along with everything else has declined along with the declining economy.

I read this article in the NY Times today which talks about how the “top” plastic surgeons in the US used to have waiting lists to come see them that were two years long, now the waiting list is only a month. Many of these surgeons contribute this to the growing concerns over the economy, some over the loss of interest in plastic surgery, some to the increasing numbers of people opting for non-surgical procedures—such as botox, instead of a face-lift. 

Dr. Anthony Giffin a popular plastic surgeon in Los Angelos said “I think it’s related to the economy.  We had people refinancing their homes and using them as A.T.M.s to pay for procedures like liposuction and breast augmentation.” Dr. Linda Li, another popular surgeon in Beverly Hills said  “If it’s a choice between putting food on the table or gas in the car or surgery, the choice is obvious.”  Lei Huang, a senior analyst for Summer Street Research Partners said “There is definitely a trading down from big-ticket procedures.  People considering entire face-lifts may hold off on that for a few years and tell themselves, ‘I might go in for a little bit of botox in the forehead and a little filler around the mouth because that may be all I can afford right now.’ ”  “I think it is due to nonplastic surgeons getting a bigger piece of the pie,” Dr. Michael Kane, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan said.  When it comes to facial procedures, plastic surgeons are experiencing increased competition from other doctors (such as facial surgeons, eye surgeons and dermatologists), according to a new economic forecast published this month in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

What I found interesting was that this article also points out what two plastic surgeons said in a journal article. “It is clear that plastic surgeons continue to dominate cosmetic surgery of the breast and abdomen but are battling increased competition and even falling behind in the area of facial cosmetic surgery.”

So, how I read is that is that plastic surgeons are losing ground in the area of facial cosmetic surgery as more women are opting for procedures that cost less and do not require surgery, but that they will not have to “share their piece of the pie” when it comes to breast implants.  What that tells me is that plastic surgeons are going to be pushing this procedure even harder now because…well, they don’t have a choice. If they want to keep their practice and keep the patients coming through their door….drastic times call for drastic measures.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a woman say “I went to my plastic surgeon to get a breast lift and he/she talked me into implants,” or “I went to my plastic surgeon to have my implants removed and my he/she told me that I would look terrible and tried to talk me into just having them replaced,” or “my plastic surgeon told me implants are perfectly safe and I believe him because he does this every day.”  Well ladies, this article and these reasons are why your plastic surgeon says these things. As we have already pointed out here at Beauty and The Breast, breast implants are an annuity medicine, you have to keep coming back for more and more. More and more money out of your pocket and into the plastic surgeon’s bank account.  Plastic surgeons will do anything to keep their schedule full, especially during these difficult economic times.

Teen plastic surgery is hitting the news again.  And it’s not surprising given the statistics.

 The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reports that 87,600 surgical operations were performed on 13-19 year olds in 2007, mostly for breast reduction in young males and nose reshaping. The teen surgeries represent 5 percent of overall procedures.

In an article picked up by Reuters, one doctor is trying to find a publisher for his book on teen surgery, and he isn’t finding any takers.  A voice of reason (psychologist) steps in and basically says that we should be trying to encourage self-esteem building from the inside not the outside, while acknowledging that extreme cases may very well need medical intervention.

In the article it mentions that the doctor has given a breast lift to a child that “had breasts that sagged like a 60 year old”, and who consequently started acting out and developed an eating disorder.  After her breast lift, reportedly the eating disorder disappeared.  But before this comment it says:

“But he says surgery has made a profound difference to his patients, even in the controversial area of breast implants which are generally discouraged by the ASPS for the under-18s.”

Apparently breast lifts aren’t all he’s willing to perform on teens.  And I’m guessing those teens that ended up with breast implants courtesy of the nice doctor, now report a higher self-esteem?  Job well done, right?  Let’s give those teens what they want for the moment, in the moment.  And while we’re at it, let’s throw in a free pair for mom and make it a family affair; afterall, she’s the one who went to all the trouble of bringing the child in in the first place.  Isn’t it nice when parents make the sale and you don’t have to?

Thank goodness my mom thought that I was fine just the way I was (when I told her I was getting breast implants at 19); too bad I didn’t.

 ~Kacey

Alright everyone, I’m hoping this post is going to strike up some interesting comments and opinions. This is something that I hear over and over again from the “pro-implant” and “pro-plastic surgery” people. They seem to think that if women are against breast implants and plastic surgery then that automatically makes them against using sunscreens, anti-aging lotions, hair dyes, braces, make-up and other “products” to help them look their best and assist them in keeping their youthful appearances.

I recently read this blog where it talks about how actress and mother, Cate Blanchett openly “poo poos” plastic surgery. Cate says that she doesn’t find it attractive when people get work done and that their motivation is “self obsession” and “fear.” She also said: “For me, I think what will be sexy in 50 years time will be wrinkles. Look at a man or a woman in their 50s and all I see when they have brushed their years away with surgery is self-obsession and fear. That’s not particularly attractive.”

What I found most interesting was that in this same blog, as well as this one and this one, people were actually condemning Cate for endorsing and being a spokesperson for a skincare line called, SK-II. Cate says she uses one of their products, a moisturizing skin mask made of cotton, every morning while she makes her sons’ breakfast. Many people seem to think that Cate is being a hypocrite for saying she is against plastic surgery, but then at the same time she is using an expensive anti-wrinkle cream on her face every day.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how the two things are connected. Plastic surgery is trying to be something you are not, completely changing a body part (or multiple body parts for some people.) Using a wrinkle cream is only putting in the effort to “look your best.” I don’t know about the rest of you, but just because I am not a big fan of breast implants and plastic surgery in general doesn’t automatically mean that I don’t try and look my best everyday. But, the biggest difference in those who go under the knife to look their best; is that I am using what I was born with to look my best, just putting my best foot forward everyday. Yes, I wear make-up, I put lotion with sunscreen on my face everyday, I use hair styling products and I exercise regularly. Does that make me a hypocrite? Should I walk out of the house everyday only wearing a paper bag, with my hair disheveled, zero make-up on, and never use sunscreen just because I am not a fan of plastic surgery? I’d love to hear what others have to say on this topic.

“I am a research engineer that works primarily with materials. PVC is used because it is the cheapest durable plastic, and its properties can be customized with additives. Not only is PVC harmful, the additives are harmful too (if not worse). For women and mothers everywhere, pay close attention to the use of PVC in anything that touches you or your child, especially when it comes to baby’s toys and sex toys. Visit wikipedia for a very thorough discussion on this plastic.”  ~Mr. Engineer

Mr. Engineer,  

Thank you for your comments. I thought your insightful post needed to be the focus of our next discussion.  I seemingly meet people with priviledged information all of the time. While vacationing one year, I met a researcher who had found a connection between hair dye and cancer. When their research was really starting to make strides, she said the FDA came in, collected everything, and said they’ll be taking over the study…and then she never heard anything more of it. She said that this was typical when researchers find something that could cause a lot of concern and the FDA gets wind of it. By the way, from what she said, it might be a good idea to avoid every color but brown.

Another time, a doctor of mine mentioned that during his residency, he was helping with a study on artificial sweeteners and their effect on rats. He said that every one of the rats got cancer during the study, and that they were instructed to surgically remove the cancer, and then the rats were considered “cancer-free”. Nevermind that they all got cancer from the sweeteners, with the cancer removed they could pretend it never happened. ***Did you know that in breast implant studies, often times the women that remove their implants (for whatever reason) are automatically dropped from from the study altogether?  Now I’m sure the public would be curious to know WHY they removed their implants (personal choice, health problems, capsular contracture, rupture, etc.).  That’s information that would be HELPFUL to a study, I would think.

These are just examples of a small amount of the information I’ve been exposed to by the professionals that have been involved with research. I wish we could all know what is really going on, from the people who see it happening every day. The best tool we have in this day and age is the Internet, as free-speech can truly prevail and companies are not able to stop our messages (or at least for the most part).

Thanks again for giving us a heads up. I encourage others to do the same, as we should all help each other to be as safe and healthy as possible. You’d think the FDA was looking out for us (they can barely keep up with produce by the way), but that’s just something we tell ourselves at night to help us sleep better.

Any other things we should look out for, readers?

~Kacey