Dr. Steven Levine is a renowned New York plastic surgeon, best known for his face-lifts and breast augmentation work. And apparently, as he told The Cut, he's received a lot of requests for in-home service during this pandemic:
The volume of calls, and level of intensity, is probably higher during COVID than not COVID. Almost every virtual consult ends with “How quickly can you do this?” They want to take advantage of this perceived downtime. It seems like the perfect time to recover from a procedure like a face-lift, where you need at least two weeks to lay low (whereas for breast augmentation, you only need a few days to rest at home).
[…]
Extremely successful people are used to getting what they want, when they want it. That is the reality of their life. One very well-known entrepreneur wanted to come to my office on the Upper East Side and get her face done, like, yesterday. She offered me more than four times my usual fee, all cash, and told me she’d have her lawyer draft a nondisclosure that she wouldn’t tell anyone we did it. I told her, “I love you to death, but no.”
Beyond the obvious arrogance of this whole scenario, it also sounds like a horror movie waiting to happen. More at the link.
My Wealthiest Clients Are Begging for Plastic Surgery in Quarantine [Steven Levine as told to Alyssa Shelasky / The Cut]
Image: April L. Sanders / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest
'The Try Guys' started as a jokey part of a clickbaity but harmless YouTube genre, but they've been slowly edging into much deeper topics involving masculine insecurities around their appearance, most notably Should The Try Guys Get Plastic Surgery? Read the rest
In 2001, the roof of a flaming building fell on volunteer firefighter Patrick Hardison, burning his firefighting mask onto his head. As a result, Hardison, now 41, has spent more than a decade without a face. Now, Hardison has the face of David Rodebaugh, a 26-year-old who died in a bicycling accident and donated much of his body for transplant. Surgeon Eduardo Rodriguez and a team at the New York University Langone Medical Center performed the facial transplant, "the most extensive" in history according to the hospital.
Hardison also received a new scalp, ears, ear canals, chin and cheek bones, and Rodebaugh's nose. Previously unable to close his eyes totally, he now has eyelids and also muscles for blinking.
New York University paid for the transplant, totaling $850,000 to one million dollars.
"Biography of a Face"
(New York Magazine via CNN)
Read the rest
Tobias Strebel, 35, who famously spent $100,000 on cosmetic surgery to look like Justin Bieber, was found dead in a Motel 6 in Los Angeles County. Read the rest
The Korea Herald reports that a young man of European heritage from Brazil has had plastic surgery so that he might look Korean. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
He goes by the obliquely Asian internet-name of Xiahn.
Cosmetic procedures, such as silicone implants, lip surgery or other augmentations, are nothing unusual in Brazil. But the 25-year-old man went a step further to transform himself into Asian-looking man by making alterations to his eyes. Xiahn, who asked not to be named to protect his family from Internet scrutiny, underwent 10 surgical procedures on his eyes, along with other less-invasive procedures, which cost him around $3,100. He also began wearing contact lenses to change his eye color.
Originally blue-eyed with blonde hair, he became interested in having plastic surgery after spending some time as an exchange student in Korea. He was inspired by how common plastic surgery is here.
“Koreans have many surgeries to modify the shape of their eyes and become more like Westerners. It was easy to tell when one of them had done it, walking on the street wearing sunglasses and a surgical mask,” he said. “I have no regrets, and I don’t intend to have any more procedures.”
[Korea Herald via Michelle Borok at Giant Robot] Read the rest
Love Me is Zed Nelson's photographic tour of the culture of plastic surgery across 18 countries. Above:
"I’ve had three toes shortened – a portion of bone removed between the joints and fixed together with metal rods. I like to wear Jimmy Choo’s, three-inch heels with a pointy toe.”
Foot X-ray. Toe reduction surgery.
Kristina Widmer, 36.
New York, USA
Zed Nelson: Love Me (via Smithsonian)
Love Me by Zed Nelson (Amazon) Read the rest
