Plastic Surgeons Make Appearance for Charity

In the elegant ballroom of the Irvine Hilton, 150 guests finished their lunch and then settled in to watch a slide show that featured some unappetizing looks at various body parts.

One by one, pictures of patients who have undergone plastic surgery flashed on the big screen.

Photographs of noses that had been bobbed, droopy eyelids pulled taut by the surgeon’s scalpel and thighs vacuumed free of fat inspired “oohs” and an occasional “wow” from the mostly female audience.

One picture showed a woman’s torso, her tummy flattened by liposuction.

“When you have a tummy tuck, what happens to your belly button?” asked a woman from a table in back. The answer: It pretty much stays in place.

At the recent Glam-A-Faire 1990, a benefit for the Magic Mirror Foundation sponsored by CosmetiCare Plastic Surgery Specialists in Costa Mesa and Long Beach, the message on the screen was as plain as the nose on your face: If the nose on your face is plain, or some other body part displeases you, change it.

That message was reinforced by beauty experts featured in the day’s program: Dr. Michael Niccole, plastic surgeon and founder of CosmetiCare and the Magic Mirror Foundation that donates reconstructive surgery to those who cannot afford it; David Doolittle, Hollywood makeup artist; and Edward Jimenez, a Beverly Hills hairstylist.

Each speaker suggested that with just the right hairstyle, makeup or surgical procedure, one can improve upon nature.

Anxiety about one’s looks has become a common affliction.

Every day, Niccole sees people unhappy with their appearance. About 95% of his practice involves cosmetic work--correcting prominent noses, weak chins, thin lips, small breasts and other perceived flaws.

At least two women a day have their lips injected with collagen to give them the inflated “Kim Basinger look.”

“The collagen only lasts three to six months. It’s not cheap, and it’s not painless,” he said. The procedure costs $300.

Nose jobs are also big with his clients.

“Either their nose is too wide or the tip is too thick or they have a hump on their nose.”

Yet the most popular treatment at his office remains liposuction. Clients have found the only way they can remove stubborn pockets of fat is to have a plastic surgeon vacuum them away.

“It works best for people with bird legs and bird arms and a huge amount of fat in a localized area that they can’t jog off,” he said.

“Body sculpting,” as Niccole calls plastic surgery, has become something of an epidemic in image-conscious Orange County, he said.

Local magazines are crammed with ads from plastic surgeons showing before-and-after photographs of women in scanty tank tops who have undergone breast implants or faces with every line and crinkle ironed out.

These cosmetic procedures can help improve one’s self-image, Niccole said, but they can’t do everything people want them to.

“People think plastic surgery will change their lives,” he said. “If patients are unhappy to begin with, this won’t make them happy.”

He turns away 5% of his clients because they have unrealistic expectations of the surgery’s effects.

“They come to me and say, ‘I want to look like Bo Derek.’ ”

Some imagine if they have surgery, their love lives will improve or they’ll land better jobs. Niccole prefers patients who say, “I know this is not going to change anything, but I want to improve my self-image.”

Occasionally, he turns away patients who become hooked on plastic surgery.

“Some patients would come in over and over if I let them,” Niccole said. “The real problem isn’t the nose, the face, the ears or the breasts--it’s a deep-rooted psychological problem. They think extra beauty will change who they are.”

His clients aren’t just the Ivana Trumpettes, trying to ward off the wrinkles that were once an accepted part of growing older.

Teen-agers, exposed to movie stars with perfect faces, are asking their parents for plastic surgery to correct an offending feature.

Plastic surgery on the young does have merit, Niccole said, but only under certain circumstances.

“If they’ve been traumatized since childhood and teased for having a large nose, or it’s been embedded in them that they look ugly, why wait years and years (before having surgery) and be traumatized even more?”

For Niccole, correcting a deformity that has caused the patient years of anguish is gratifying work.

He started the Magic Mirror Foundation to provide free plastic surgery to those born with disfigurements or who have suffered some type of trauma and can’t afford treatment. Doctors with the foundation donate their services.

Marisol Rodriguez, a 6-year-old Huntington Beach girl born with a second thumb on her hand, was introduced at the luncheon as the program’s recent beneficiary.

Classmates were already starting to tease his daughter because of her deformed hand, said Marisol’s father, Eufemio, speaking through an interpreter. He could not afford the $7,000 or so needed for his daughter’s surgery, so the foundation paid for the treatment.

Today, nearly a year after the operation, Eufemio looks at his dark-haired, brown-eyed daughter and he doesn’t have to say a word. It’s obvious that in his eyes, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world.