The BH Beauty Club

Part II

The Facelift Alternatives: Tightening Devices and Volume Restoration

How much laxity and volume loss you have on a varying scale – mild to moderate; moderate to severe – can help your doctor determine whether or not you need a facelift. But it’s vital that you know, beforehand, so that you come to your doctor as prepared as you can possibly be.
Chapters 7 and 8 are designed to help you discover what non-surgical procedures are right for you and, if necessary, what non-surgical procedures might be complementary to various surgical procedures your physician might recommend. That’s right; gone are the days of one-procedure-fits-all – for everybody.

Today most doctors customize a diagnosis based not just on the degree of laxity and volume loss but that patient’s specific personality, pain and recovery threshold and a variety of other factors. But to perfectly tailor your procedure, or combination of procedures, you and your doctor need to work together as two equal parts of your own personal doctor-patient team.
That is why it is so important for you to be educated before you speak with your physician; being intimidated by all those degrees and pedigrees on the whole behind his or her head is no way to feel like you’re on equal footing with your doctor. However, that is exactly where you need to be; eye to eye, not sitting at his or her feet and lapping up those pearls of wisdom.
You want to discuss your options, openly and honestly; without fear that you are asking “dumb” questions and with the knowledge that your physician is interested in the unique and personal you. A generic diagnosis won’t do here; it has to be personal and unique to you and your specific needs if you are to get the results you desire.

A lot of what we do with our patients is actually “undoing” what the popular media and decades of hearing “facelift” have already done to them. Many people think that a facelift is the ultimate in plastic surgery or the gold standard of surgical procedures; others think that all the creams and lotions and skincare is something you do until the inevitable aging process makes a facelift equally inevitable.
Not true; as we always say in our offices the best procedure is the one you avoid by taking care of your skin in the first place. Just as importantly, through a complement of various surgical and non-surgical procedures, you can avoid the severity and invasiveness of a facelift altogether.
Then again, perhaps the years have been unkind to you and that, combined with genetics has increased the need for a facelift; so be it. Chapter 8 will cover all that – and then some. But for our purposes in this chapter we are gearing the information toward people with early laxity and volume loss that a typical facelift isn’t going to deal with.

After all, a facelift too soon is only going to make matters worse in later years just as waiting too long is going to make the need for a facelift later just that much more imperative. The key is to know what to do and when; we’re here to help you do just that.
The two issues we’ll be talking about in this chapter are:

To be Continued…

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“What is Beautiful is Good…”

The Greek poet Sappho once wrote, “What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.” Since then, much has been written about beauty and, not surprisingly, Sappho’s quote has proven to be quite astute; at least the first part: “What is beautiful is good.” Indeed, from better grades to more room on the sidewalk, those people we consider to be more attractive get preferential treatment in almost every area of life.

In an article for the American Journal of Sociology, authors Murray Webster and James E. Driskell combine several previous studies to determine that, “The most general conclusion from research is that the world must be a more pleasant and satisfying place for attractive people because they possess almost all types of social advantages that can be measured.”

Which social advantages, exactly? The authors go on to catalogue a myriad list of such advantages, beginning as early as childhood, “Attractive schoolchildren are expected by their teachers to achieve higher school marks than unattractive children, and they usually do so; their misdemeanors are judged less serious and it is predicted that they will have more successful careers.”

Attractive children often go on to become attractive adults, where the benefits continue to multiply: “Attractive adults are thought to have happier marriages than those who are unattractive, and that expectation seems to be fulfilled. Opinions of attractive adults are more likely to be agreed with; attractive adults are perceived as having better mental health; Attractive adults are even granted larger ‘personal space’ on the sidewalk than are the unattractive.”

Of course, we’ve all seen Tyra Banks wear an undercover camera while donning a fat suit and been amazed at how differently the supermodel was treated when compared to when the suit came off, but hard research reveals that what she experienced was no isolated event. Studies prove that attractive people really do earn more and become more successful – in business and in love – than those considered less attractive.
Case in point: a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reports that, “Good-looking, slim, tall people tend to make more money than their plain-Jane counterparts”

Writing in the Journal of Young Investigators, author Charles Feng from Stanford University writes, “Psychological research suggests that people generally choose mates with a similar level of attractiveness. The evolutionary theory is that by mating with someone who has similar genes, one’s own genes are conserved. Moreover, a person’s demeanor and personality also influences how others perceive his or her beauty.”

Furthermore, a study from the Archives of Dermatology boasts research to support the theory that, “The best-looking women in high school are 10 times as likely to marry as the least attractive, and they are more likely to marry sooner and marry persons of greater wealth or social status. Sexual encounters are more numerous and varied for attractive people. Better treatment for the better looking extends to the workplace. West Point graduates with facial features more suggestive of dominance are more likely to achieve high rank. In the private sector, the good-looking are more likely to be hired, given a higher salary, and promoted sooner…”

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