Straight Talk about Cosmetic Surgery

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The plastic surgery equivalent of the Oscars occurs each year at about this time. Members of the two major plastic surgery organizations, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, break out their calculators and add up how many procedures they performed during the prior year.

They report their numbers to their national organizations, which in turn issue press releases with great fanfare.

This year’s stories discussed the increase in male cosmetic surgery and the meteoric rise in chin implants.

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These numbers are always interesting, and reflect changing tastes and surging or faltering economies. It’s fascinating to learn what procedures have become wildly popular…and which ones are facing extinction. But I take nothing at face value. If we really look at those numbers, men’s surgical procedures were indeed up, but only 1 percent, and still down 48 percent from a decade ago. The real growth has been in nonsurgical procedures, which were up 6 percent over the year.

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And chin implants? Yes, they were up 10 percent over the last year, but those numbers are nowhere near the popularity of that procedure a decade ago. They’re still down 60 percent. Either chins are spontaneously getting larger or people just don’t care as much, or maybe too many were done in earlier times.

It’s no secret that liposuction was the most popular procedure last year and that breast augmentations were a close second. But coming up fast in this surgical horserace was the tummy tuck. And the reason for its popularity? Baby boomers are aging and many are done having kids. And while the products of those pregnancies are all those beautiful children running around, the havoc they created while they were in your womb can’t be reversed even with hours of daily exercise. Tummy tucks tighten the loosened belly muscles and toss out the extra skin and fat. You’ll get a new belly button and a flatter tummy with this usually inpatient procedure, but the cost is a hip-to-hip scar and a few days of pain.

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