Plastic Surgery Business Sags Amid Recession, Celebrity Regrets

The New York Times reports that plastic surgery is on the decline...especially in regions where it's most enjoyed.

"In Orange County, where plastic surgery is a part of their culture, doctors told me business is down 30 to 40 percent," said Thomas Seery, the president of realself.com, a site devoted to reviewing vanity-medicine procedures. "That tells me something is fundamentally changing there."

Even a few celebrities, those early adopters of appearance technology, have started to deride the plasticized look that sometimes accompanies cosmetic interventions, a harbinger perhaps of a new climate of restraint in which overt augmentation seems like bad taste.

Call it a Botox backlash. Last month in interviews with different magazines, the actresses Courteney Cox and Lisa Rinna said that they did not like the look of excessive facial injections.

Keep reading.

-OR-

Keep reading about Lisa Rinna's plastic surgery regrets.

-OR-

Keep reading about Courteney Cox's plastic surgery regrets.

Comments

[tomas0808]

How plastic surgery proponents can say it makes people feel better about themselves with a straight face is beyond me. How can a procedure that inherently tells the person undergoing it "I'm not pretty enough" possibly make someone feel better about themself?

Physical beauty is just like fashion, if you feel good about yourself and confident you can make anything look good, you can look good whatever your body looks like. .

[BlackYowe]

Amen

[vjoseph]

Thats because their straight face is put on by botox

[poster1122]

I don't know. People do lots of things to make themselves look better (at least in their mind): from makeup to teeth whitening to hitting the gym.

My friends who opted to buff up at the gym do feel better about themselves, it seems. I admit I think I look a lot better than when I was less active. And I do think it's true that looking better does have a lot of benefits in this society.

A boob job is a surgical procedure, so it's not trivial (and it could be dangerous). But if it goes well, it's a fairly minor commitment. Something like diet and exercise requires a wholesale change on how you approach your life, so it's arguable that it's a much more drastic change.

[aweissnet]

But that's _healthy_, as opposed to butchering your body. People should exercise, not opt for the knife.

If it were so easy to fix other things ...

But on the boobs--forget it .... I'd never ever ever ever do that. Self mutilation for no good purpose in the world.

[nemom]

Some people are not as fortunate as you tomaso808. Some people are born with birth defects, growths, have had disfigurements from accidents, or their bodies have fluctuated with changes in size due to pregnancies or weight change or illness. There are lots of good reasons for normal well balanced intelligent people to choose plastic surgery.

[mapleaforever]

Ok to all that but what about the epidemic of bozos who have no such reasons?

[Vickster]

Tomaso808,

Re: "Physical beauty is just like fashion..."

You're absolutely right. And like fashion, ideas about beauty change too. There was a time (not all that long ago) when Chinese women thought tiny feet were beautiful. These women also performed a primitive form of "cosmetic surgery" called footbinding on their daughters. This involved breaking the bones in a girl's foot, then binding her feet so that her toes would curl under and her arches would form a bow after the bones healed.

All things considered, I have to wonder what procedure cosmetic surgeons would devise if western women developed the same desire for tiny feet.

And women think men are weird.

[BlackYowe]

Please can we now dump the overly white teeth too?

[Beachrunner]

This is just . .. .tragic.

[Clairvaux]

Remember that great line from "The Graduate"

"Plastics"

[Seven7s]

lol @ sags

[lungfish]

Nothing says shallow and unconfident like a ridiculous boob job. I'll take em real in whatever size they originally came in. Gals, save your money or spend it on a good work out program and diet. All I want or need from you is your happy face and a good attitude.
I live in HI and see a lot of compensating behaviors in both genders. The sunglasses, revealing bathing suit and boob job don't attract anyone that I can see because they make women seem inaccessable and unfriendly. The guys face similar issues because they don't know how to be sincere and open. Its about confidence and the easiest and least effective way to deal with low self esteem is to change your appearance.
Just some friendliness and an honest smile (along with some common sense and a little skepticism about the stability of anyone you meet) will take you further.
A giant pair of phoney fun bags is simply a cheap attention getter.

[aweissnet]

Thanks! I tend to agree.

[LiberalBuzz]

I love the take on words in the title.

[rektruax]

Did ya'll mean to put the picture for this feature on the front page right beside the picture of Clinton licking his chops?

[Copeword]

So, is this good news or bad. I feel mixed.

[dcoxucla]

BUY ONE GET ONE FREE

[kellygrrrl]

the upside of the bad economy: FakeBoobs will go out of style. Flashy Bling will be gone. Holidays will be about families sharing time and meals together -- rather than shopping for cashmere

[vjoseph]

They will be back, they always do

[Janet Carter]

Earlier this week we get to see Madonna's privates and now "someone's" plastic boobs. How about some male eye candy for us females, Huffpo ?

[vjoseph]

Hear, hear

[provgrays]

Americans are such babies about the body. They're breasts.

Next.

[mairs]

Those aren't breasts. They're bags of plastic covered with skin.

[Antifascist-08]

I was just thinking about this the other day. The effects of the depression on plastic surgery, that is. Really, I swear.

If we go to a one payer system of health care, does that mean elective surgery such as this will be covered or will the waiting time be too long? What about collagen, botox and my god, viagra? These are the mainstays of our health care economy. i was thinking that there should be a private sector medical economy for all of these things.

I'm calling for an investigation.

[Treehuggindirtworshiper]

Wonder if I could get a deal on an eye job?