Botox and the Age of Camaraderie
The walls are a stylish ochre, the lighting is soft and dim, the clientele is gorgeous, and the woman who pours you a Perrier and takes your order is dressed in a black suede skirt and go-go boots. But this isn’t a Pinot Bistro, and the lovely employee is an aesthetician, not a waitress. A white lab coat is draped over her chic ensemble, and it’s a medical history form--not a menu--that she’s handing you.
“Is this your first plastic surgery party?” one giddy female patron inquires of another.
For most of the 20 some-odd women gathered in the Encino medical office of dermatologist Debra Luftman, M.D., the answer is yes. Plastic surgery parties like this one, events where women bring their friends and order up Botox injections and chemical peels like so many dry martinis, have been popular in London and New York for the past year, but the phenomenon is new to L.A.
By six o’clock on Wednesday evening, the waiting room is packed with jovial, attractive and accomplished women picking at prosciutto and crab cake hors d’oeuvres. No one is under 30, or over 50, and executives, housewives, actresses and fashion editors are all impeccably turned out--these are women who can spend $300 to $400 for a cosmetic procedure, so one can fairly surmise that their budgets for hair, makeup, clothes and personal trainers are ample. Still, it’s a sophisticated crowd--no Baywatch breasts or garish bleach jobs in sight.
The atmosphere is giddy: the clientele is nervous, but excited. One by one, they slip away for 10, 20 minutes to one of the exam rooms.
Debbie Rosenquist is tall, blond and the mother of three kids. “That’s why I have all the wrinkles I have,” she jokes while settling into the exam chair, then puts on a fierce scowl. “I told my kids, this is how I look when I’m mad at you, so remember it, because I’m not going to look like this in a week!”
Dr. Luftman breezes in, wearing an elegant pantsuit, exquisitely coifed and made up. She is an excellent advertisement for her services, a 43-year-old mother of two with a bustling private practice, a shelf of research awards and a teaching position at UCLA--and who happens to be a much-better-looking woman than most of her movie-star clients. “I’ve had all of the procedures offered here tonight myself,” she says. “Except for collagen, because I’m allergic to it.”
Luftman practiced as an internist for two years before going into cosmetic dermatology, a choice influenced by her interest in art and aesthetics, which she studied under a fellowship at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland before medical school.
The party is the first she’s thrown. “I was asked to do this by people who had heard about it happening on the East Coast,” Luftman says. “So I sent out invitations, and a menu of services to choose from. And everything is $100 off the regular price tonight.” The services on offer this evening include chemical peels, mini-facials, collagen injections and a new procedure called a FotoFacial, but most of the demand is for Botox, Botox, Botox.
The fastest-growing cosmetic procedure in the industry, Botox is a neuro-toxin derived from the same botulism spore that causes a particularly nasty strain of food poisoning. When injected into muscle tissue in small doses, it temporarily paralyzes the surrounding tissue.
First developed to treat conditions such as facial tics, Botox’s ability to also erase the effect of frown lines and crow’s feet was a happy side effect of treatment that quickly became its own industry. Although the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve Botox for removing frown lines, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports Botox is now the most popular non-surgical procedure, with nearly 800,000 performed in 2000, 88% of them on women. Of those, 59% were in the 35- to 50-year-old age bracket.
Luftman leans over Rosenquist, her manicured hand welding a delicate syringe that’s loaded up with toxin. It’s deeply weird, being at a party and watching one stunning woman perform medical procedures on another, both of them laughing and gossiping all the while. Weird, but surprisingly not unpleasant. The moment is in fact diabolically charming, and somehow very 21st century.
“There is technique involved,” Luftman explains. “If you do it correctly you can eliminate the wrinkles without freezing the facial expressions.”
“What’s that crunching sound?” Rosenquist asks, giggling, as Luftman pricks the skin of her forehead repeatedly with the needle.
“That’s just skin,” Luftman says. “It’s a good sound.”
Rosenquist chats about shopping for sunglasses, comparing and contrasting the experience to getting cosmetic procedures, and in a couple of minutes, the procedure is over.
“This was so fun!” Rosenquist declares, sitting up with an ice pack to her forehead. “I need to go have a glass of wine! Debbie (Luftman) doesn’t serve us any wine because it can increase bleeding,” she whispers to the side with a mock pout.
Down the hall, Lori Symans, a 43-year-old vice president of sales and marketing for a home builder, is waiting to have a smidgen of Botox injected into her glabella--the vertical line that appears between the brows--and a PhotoFacial, a procedure in which Luftman uses a wand to blanket the surface of the skin with light pulses that are supposed to stimulate collagen growth in the skin, reducing redness and brown spots and tightening pores. “I never thought that I would do anything like this, any kind of plastic surgery,” Symans says. “Now, I don’t even care if people know I’m doing it.”
It’s been a long time since the days of “Does she or doesn’t she?”
Susan Walters, who plays Diana on “The Young and the Restless,” brought friends, and is making a fun evening of it. “My friend Kim Ulrich, who is on “Passions,” is in having Botox right now,” she says. “I brought her along because she’s always game for these things.” And apparently she doesn’t mind a whit that Walters is out here divulging this information to her fans. Walters laughs, and shrugs. “If you’re that beautiful, you can fess up.”
Walters tried Botox herself, two years ago, but isn’t a fan of it. “I happen to like my face mobile,” she says. And Walters, like most of the women here, remains adamantly against having any kind of “real” plastic surgery. “I’d be real nervous to cut into my face,” she says. “I’ve worked with men and women who have had face lifts, and I can’t honestly say that the ones who had work done look better than the ones who didn’t. There are women at my kids’ school who have NO expression. You can try so hard not to look 40 that you end up looking 50.”
Ulrich wanders out, smiling sweetly and clutching her ice pack to her forehead. “We need all the help we can get,” she says. “All of us.”
Whatever one’s feelings about plastic surgery, the most interesting thing about the evening is its woman-centric flavor, how communal and gentle the atmosphere is. If only pap smears and mammograms and teeth cleanings were this festive.
Not all plastic surgery parties have the same vibe, of course. One imagines that the bi-monthly “Botox Cocktail Party” at the new spa at the Palms Resort Casino in Las Vegas, presided over by plastic surgeon Dr. Paul Nassif, is likely to be a bit more fabulous and posh. Dr. Nassif also plans to begin hosting Botox parties in his Beverly Hills office sometime soon. His parties may be more co-ed affairs, as 20% of his clientele is male. “I have actors and male models for clients,” he says over the phone. “And a growing number of businessmen who actually want to have no facial expression in business meetings. They want to look cool.”
Once the shock of the newness wears off, the whole phenomenon’s bizarre-quotient seems low compared to that of having various and sundry body parts tattooed and/or pierced. In terms of aesthetic torture, Luftman claims that Botox has virtually no side effects except for occasional and mild bruising.
Otherwise the atmosphere in her office is one of desire and daring. You’re here, everyone’s having so much fun, the girls are bonding, oh, what the heck, why not try it? Oh, what a soft, warm, inviting thing peer pressure really is in practice. And if you haven’t experienced this powerfully seductive force since high school, it’s a shock to realize how utterly enjoyable it can be.