Paper or Plastic?
By
Leo de Natale
The Covid-19 virus has upended the American economy and one medical group, plastic surgeons, is in a tizzy. The surgery these folks perform has gone the way of all medical care. During the past three months there have been no face lifts, no Botox injections, no laser peels. No boob jobs, no nose jobs, no tummy tucks, no buttocks enhancements. Life has been tough on this group. Plastic surgery is an extremely profitable subspecialty of dermatology but here’s the hitch: it’s fee for service. Patients pay big bucks for these procedures but there’s no money to be made when a pandemic comes along and pulls the plug on elective surgery. Until restrictions are lifted these vainglorious persons are wearing paper, not plastic masks.
Poor Dolly Parton and Cher can’t have their lips reinflated. Sandra Bullock, fresh off facial surgery, is shilling for Olay. Dennis Quaid is hawking insurance after his face lift. His face has an obviously different appearance. There’s a debate over who had more plastic surgery: Wayne Newton or the late Kenny Rogers.
In Hollywood, plastic surgery is a rite of passage, especially among female entertainers. For aging actresses their careers are hourglasses measuring the passage of time. At around age 40, many feel compelled to choose plastic surgeries that will rejuvenate their physical appearance. Some become obsessive and undergo multiple surgical procedures performed on many body parts. It becomes a painful, masochistic addiction. Cher is unapologetic about her war against aging. And with lip injections, chin and facial implants they usually have the same Barbie Doll look.
Other celebrities come to mind: Meg Ryan, who at a comparatively young age, underwent mouth enhancement and was left with bass lips. Actor Mickey Rourke appears embalmed, Donatella Versace is freakish and Priscilla Presley hired a K-Mart plastic surgeon who injected her cheeks with industrial strength silicone. A once beautiful woman is disfigured and resembles a different person and Elvis checks into Heartbreak Hotel.
Another group affected by the plastic surgery interdict is the political class. It’s no secret Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has undergone facelifts. Ditto Vice President Joe Biden. Then we come to male hair transplants – the Land of the Plugs. Biden and Senate Minority Lead Chuck Schumer have hair transplants. Unfortunately they lack sufficient hair for a full procedure and waltz around with these pill box tufts atop their heads. I’m sure neither man likes being photographed from behind because there’s a vast wasteland of barenaked scalp behind the shrubbery.
To even things out politically it must be noted Fox News’ Dana Perino, Jeanine Pirro and Laura Ingraham have followed Hollywood protocol. The surgical knife swings both ways.
One can Google “Celebrities Who Have Undergone Plastic Surgery” and view a plethora of A-list actresses and actors who’ve faced the scalpel, felt the Botox needles and suffered the burn of laser peels. Plastic surgery inflicts pain. The procedures are extremely expensive but Hollywood denizens can afford the price.
There was one internationally famous Brazilian plastic surgeon named Dr. Ivo Pitanguy who was so successful he purchased an island near Rio de Janeiro and built a private surgical center. Patients traveled worldwide and were transported by helicopter to undergo the various surgeries. He died an extremely wealthy man in 2016.
What most people don’t realize is the horrific origins of plastic surgery. Ironically the story is the stuff of Hollywood.
In the late 19th Century, an Armenian immigrant named Varaztad Kazanjian escaped Turkish persecution. He is considered the godfather of a profession that is still classified as a subspecialty of dermatology. Schooled at a Jesuit academy in what was then the Ottoman Empire, he showed superior intelligence. His diaspora landed him in Worcester, Massachusetts. With humble beginnings, he first worked at a wire factory and showed remarkable artistic talent in shaping figures with this strange medium. Through many steps of good fortune, he found himself graduating from Harvard Dental School in 1905. He became a skilled dentist and had established a growing practice. He was interested in oral surgery. His life was forever changed, however, when the cataclysm known as World War I erupted.
After the United States entered the war, Kazanjian volunteered his services and was stationed at field hospitals. There he saw the carnage of war. Soldiers were wheeled in with severe facial wounds. Some had faces that were half-missing; others sustained disfiguring shrapnel wounds. Some soldiers had severe facial burns. These unfortunate men became a hospital ward of the macabre.
Kazanjian’s career coincided with the emergence of oral surgery and he was in virgin territory while dealing with suffering soldiers who would be maimed or die without surgical intervention. Modern plastic surgery was born in the trenches and death fields of Europe.
Kazanjian had an incredible dexterity and a sense of aesthetics complemented his knowledge of facial anatomy. He was at the fountainhead of creating new surgical techniques that would transform the specialty of dermatology. His genius cast a long shadow on plastic surgery.
As a surgeon, Kazanjian found himself dedicated to saving lives and restoring human faces to an acceptable appearance. It was 20th Century alchemy. The wounded soldiers were his guinea pigs and he developed the surgical techniques that have expanded during the past 100 years. What he created out of necessity evolved into modern cosmetic surgery.
Kazanjian returned to Massachusetts where he eventually joined the Harvard Medical School’s faculty and established and improved upon the techniques developed in field hospitals. His son Kenneth followed him and became a pre-eminent plastic surgeon. The father’s surgical acumen catapulted him to fame. He was honored by numerous organizations and by his alma mater, Harvard.
Plastic surgery is an important specialty. Soldiers burned and disfigured in the numerous wars that have been fought since 1917 and men and women injured in automobile or industrial accidents have benefitted from Kazanjian’s pioneering work. For example, celebrity surgeon Sandra Lee (“Dr. Pimple Popper”) has demonstrated how cosmetic surgery improves patients’s physical and emotional quality of life.
During the 1930’s, however, the mercantile aspects of Kazanjian’s success appeared. One of the first aesthetic plastic surgery procedures was rhinoplasty, aka a “nose job.” How many of us have known teenagers or young adults with large, bulbous or aquiline noses who underwent such surgery. It’s similar to orthodontia where crooked teeth, overbites-think Bugs Bunny – and underbites are corrected. Middle school and high school children are familiar with that ordeal.
As the 20th Century wore on, plastic surgery exploded with new techniques for virtually any body part. There have been advances in procedures and materials (silicone). Lasers eventually arrived. The instruments and chemicals used have transformed the specialty into a multi-million dollar industry. Plastic surgeons are among the wealthiest physicians because, with few exceptions, it’s fee for service. Patients have to pay for that facelift or boob job. And for many, having Botox injections, surgical facelifts and blepharoplasties have become de rigueur.
Celebrities, politicians, or aging wealthy Americans are chasing their forbear, Ponce de Leon, in their search for the fountain of youth. Do they ever reach their goal?
The pandemic has presumably caused significant revenue loss. The surgeons will resume performing surgery as the protocol changes. Given the universal hysteria caused by the virus, many who were scheduled and those who want procedures are perhaps reluctant to contract the disease in an operating room. The surgeons probably yearn for the halcyon days before the current pandemic calamity.
The unfortunate reality is individuals undergoing cosmetic surgery have succumbed to self-delusion. There are still many Botox addicts out there. Their faces are visual masks. But is it worth the money and pain in today’s world? It is ironic in the Covid-19 pandemic era everyone is wearing anti-viral masks that transforms a person’s face into a mystery. Everybody is a stranger. The pandemic has created an atmosphere where no one can tell if there’s a beauty or beast underneath those blue disposable paper masks.
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