Cosmetic Surgery

Few people regret having cosmetic surgery, though many regret not doing so. If you want, a good surgeon can change your appearance. But beware. Such an operation requires that you be well motivated or you could be unhappy with the result.

Facial Operations

Face-lift – removes major wrinkles and lifts sagging skin.
Blepharoplasty – removes sagging skin that makes the eyes look puffy, raises drooping eyelids or reshapes eyebrows.
Cheek or chin augmentation – inserts moulded implants to reshape chin or cheekbones. Otoplasty – takes back protruding ears.
Double chin reduction – removes the sag of fat and loose skin under the chin.
Chin reduction – removes bone and cartilage to reshape the chin.
Lip augmentation – reshapes the lips, using fat cells to make them fuller.
Rhinoplasty – reshapes, smoothes out or straightens the nose.

Choosing A SURGEON

You’ll have to bear quite a lot of discomfort and may be somewhat depressed until the
effects become apparent. It’s important that you have the operation for the right reasons
and not because a critical partner pressures you into having surgery.

If you have serious psychological problems, cosmetic surgery isn’t going to put them right.
If a relationship is disintegrating or a marriage falling apart, plastic surgery isn’t going to
remedy the situation. On the other hand, if you’ve suffered severe psychological stress
because of your appearance, cosmetic surgery can have long-term benefits that will affect all
aspects of your life. Nowadays, a good reason for having surgery may simply be that your
body looks older than you feel. You need seek no further justification.

After cosmetic surgery, people are often more at ease with themselves and feel more
self-assured. That alone makes you look better. First step is to find a good cosmetic surgeon with whom you get on well. Don’t be afraid to shop around. Here are some tips to help you find one:

• Get a sound recommendation from a doctor or a good friend.
• As a rule, don’t follow up an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine. Advertising is against the ethical code of doctors in the UK.
• A surgeon who is trustworthy will advise you on which operation will give you the best results. Be suspicious of a surgeon who agrees to perform exactly the operation you request without giving you a professional opinion as to what you actually need.
• No good surgeon will give you a 100 percent guarantee of success. He should take time to explain in detail exactly what the operation involves and what can be achieved, and give a realistic estimate of the chances of success. Be sceptical about a surgeon who’s not realistic.
• Only entrust yourself to a surgeon if you get on with him or her from the beginning. If you don’t like the surgeon at your first visit, you re unlikely to later.

Removing The Signs of Age

Cosmetic surgeons say that typical face-lift patients are not vain, rich women with nothing better to do with their money, but energetic, active people who are less interested in hiding their age than in looking as youthful as they feel. These patients think that an obviously ageing face erodes self-confidence and may even cause panic. A typical question such a patient should ask herself is “Why should I go on looking like this when every other part of me feels young?”

Many women in their 40s and 50s are not ready to resign themselves to being thought of as ageing. They feel that growing older would be easier to bear if they could avoid looking old in the process. Furthermore, they often feel it is unjust that they should start to show signs of deterioration when they are just beginning to reach intellectual and emotional maturity. Consequently, when fine lines, winkles and sags appear on their faces, they decide to fight back.

A woman having a face-lift does not want friends and relatives to gasp with surprise at their first sight of her afterwards. She would prefer a natural look, an almost indefinable improvement in her appearance. For this reason, a totally smooth skin is not the desired outcome. If the skin is overstretched, a false oriental look around the eyes may rob the face of much of its expressive quality. The best advertisement for a good cosmetic surgeon is a patient who looks naturally young for her age, not one whose smooth skin seems artificial.

At some point, matters reach a crisis the patient may resort to psychotherapy, for example, because of her problems with self- confidence. indecisiveness and inability to enjoy sex. She may find it impossible to relax with people because of her consciousness that she is not looking attractive. Very often there is not so much an intense desire to have the offending
feature improved as a continual feeling of depression caused by the knowledge that she is not looking good. It is not unreasonable to expect many of these feelings to diminish sharply. If not to disappear, once the deformity has been corrected by cosmetic surgery.

The same feelings, of course, may arise from a flaw so trivial that scarcely anyone else is aware of it. Even in these cases, cosmetic surgery can bring about a dramatic psychological improvement – although it is always possible that the patient’s own feeling that her appearance has been altered for the better may vanish when no change in other people’s
reactions to her is apparent. The inner quality that makes some people attractive is something no surgeon can give, and it is not necessarily linked with having beautiful features.