Hats Off to Plastic Surgeons!

All over the world people express themselves through their personal appearance.  Our choices in makeup, jewelry, clothing, hair color and style are our way of letting strangers know a little bit about who we are.  They help us to say something about our belief system, and they assist us in attracting like-minded individuals.  Some external expressions may be more extreme than others.  There are tribal people in South America, for instance, who paint anacondas on their faces, and even stick bamboo twigs into their facial skin to recreate the look of the whiskers of the animals they most revere.  Other indigenous people force large disks into their earlobes, forever changing the natural orientation of their ears.  But you don’t have to go deep into the jungle to witness extraordinary self expression.  Body art is extremely common these days.  Lots of people sport tattoos, some all over their bodies, and what patch of skin has not been pierced and bejeweled by someone?

The desire to look on the outside the way we feel on the inside is absolutely part of the human condition.  And the work plastic surgeons do to help accommodate this desire deserves every bit of the acclaim it receives.  Plastic surgery has the power to rebuild lives, from the outside in.  It has the power to boost our self confidence.  Not only can it keep us looking younger longer, but it can generate life-changing outcomes for people who were born with abnormalities.  Birthmarks, warts and growths can be removed through plastic surgery, and so can scars left from severe childhood acne.  Cleft lips and other disfigurements can be corrected, and so can Gynecomastia, the abnormal development of large mammary glands in males.  People who have undergone bariatric surgery for obesity can have reconstructive surgery to eliminate loose skin.  A body that won’t bounce back after motherhood can be just as psychologically debilitating for one person as a birth defect or a burn scar may be for another.  There is no end to the good work plastic surgeons can do with the technology available to them in the 21^st century.

The line between adornment and correction is a blur, and no one ought to have to suffer from the belief that they should learn to live with whatever physical aspects they happen to have—whether they were born with them or incurred them along the way.  A face lift for a middle age executive whose job requires her to impress clients daily is no more important than a facelift for a housewife who takes pride in how she looks when she meets with her book club.  The only one who knows how you feel about how you look is you.  If the right makeup, jewelry and clothing are not making the cut, you have other options.  Getting real can sometimes mean going deep, asking yourself what you are willing to do for yourself, how far you are willing to go to level the playing field, so that you make just as good a first impression as anyone else.

There are no judges here deciding who should and who should not.  The technology to change the way we look didn’t used to be available and now it is.  It’s as simple as that.  Vectra 3D Imaging takes the surprise out of procedure outcomes.  Lasers are quickly becoming to this day and age what sunscreen was to the mid 1900s.  But let us not forget that all these incredible tools are only as effective as the plastic surgeons who wield them.  And the best plastic surgeons are not only skilled and experienced by also empathic.  They know how to listen, and they know how to help.