At this show, beauty is just skin deep
The possibilities were endless.
Just look at those before-and-afters! Old crone one minute, camera-ready minx the next! Lose cellulite without straining a muscle! Have that golden tan in just minutes, no waiting! Tired of looking so tired? Get rid of that old flesh with a “controlled third-degree burn.” After the wounds stop weeping, you won’t look a day over 40!
Not for the faint heart, this brand of cosmetic self-improvement. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And of all cities in America, Los Angeles is perhaps the most desperate, all the time, to measure up, which is why more cosmetic procedures are performed here annually than anywhere else in the nation -- at least that’s what market research told Michael Colby, president of GPS, Inc., the company staging the event.
So it’s only natural (if such a word can be used in this context) that the first-ever Cosmetic Enhancement Expo was held last weekend at the L.A. Convention Center. The event was promoted as a pioneering one-stop shop for what one plastic surgeon called “external medicine,” and served as further proof that the public’s appetite for all things makeover-related is far from satisfied.
About 7,000 (mostly) women from all over Southern California -- many of them lured by ads aired during plastic surgery TV shows -- paid $25 each to cruise through the hall. Some brought their mothers and their teenage daughters. Others dragged their husbands. Many of the Expo attendees -- full-time moms, retirees, medical professionals and, yes, college students -- had already gotten their faces lifted, tummies tucked or breasts augmented. They were here to investigate their next procedure.
There was Jannette Kingsbury, a 43-year-old mother of three from Agoura who has had a breast augmentation, liposuction, a tummy tuck, an eyebrow lift, a nose job and chin implant, who said of her surgeries: “It’s just like a better me.” There were about 100 exhibitors with names that evoked plump, dewy skin (Rejuvalife Vitality Institute), thick, sun-dappled hair (Crown and Glory Enterprises) and tanned, flat stomachs (LipoSelection). Chirpy slogans promised each passerby the same thing: Youth and beauty! Youth and beauty! Youth and beauty! Here, cosmetic procedures aren’t just an option -- they’re the key to a truly satisfying life.
Women offered up their insecurities, their lack of symmetry, their ample rear ends, sun-damaged skin and underwhelming bosoms to the expo’s experts because here, of all places, anyone can be beautiful.
Makeover revolution
Ask any plastic surgeon what ignited this boom and he or she will usually offer two words: “Extreme Makeover.” The year after the ABC TV show debuted in December 2002, cosmetic plastic surgeries were up 33%, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (Botox injections went up 157% during the same period.)
“I remember back in the day, if somebody was going to get their eyes done, they went to Europe for two weeks and they’d come back looking all refreshed,” says the notably redhead-and-buxom “Extreme Makeover” casting director Marla Brodsky. “It was a big secret. Now it’s like they almost have bragging rights.”
Cue expo publicist Arlene Howard. She has had a phenol peel, a painful procedure that burns the flesh off the face to the first epidermis. “After that,” she says, “you’re on skeleton.” Two weeks of healing later, brand new, lineless skin appears.
“I’m 65,” she says, unprompted, pulling off her glasses to reveal a face that could pass for someone in their 40s. “I tell people how old I am because I’m breaking down the bias.”
At the moment Howard is promoting Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon Robert Kotler (of “Dr. 90210” fame), whose computer imaging station was one of the most popular booths at the expo. Throughout the weekend, women crowded around his dream machine to get their photos manipulated, making them look decades younger or, at the very least, “refreshed.” Point and click and -- poof! -- no more double chin! Tired eyes gone! Instant cheek bones!
“Oh yeah! Look at that!” said 62-year-old Dorothy Cecchi as the loose skin under her neck and on her cheeks disappeared and a perfect chin appeared. (Well, not really. Just in the photo.)
Kotler says he knows what he can deliver from spotting a face across the room. But for the patient, he says, the computer “takes a little bit of the mystery out of it.”
Around the corner at the “Extreme Makeover” casting call booth, Inglewood student Miriam Davila, 26, auditioned for a chipper casting producer named Becky Cattie, whose blond ponytail bounced as she complimented Davila’s multicolored ensemble. “You got style girl!”
Davila knew that. It’s a slim figure she wants. At about 5 feet 4, and 300 pounds, she says, she draws stares at the mall.
“I know I’m beautiful,” she said. “But people don’t look at you as if you were beautiful. They just look at you like you’re an alien from another planet. Even if you’re enjoying yourself. People stare.... I don’t want them to judge.”
No pain, no gain
A thicket of cameras from “Entertainment Tonight” and “The Insider” hovered around makeup artist Barry Knapp as he applied heavy foundation to the red, splotchy face of Suzanne Alvin, a 57-year-old sonographer. The Monterey woman recently had a face-lift and the excruciating CO2 laser resurfacing (a.k.a. “the controlled third-degree burn.”) For the first few days, she said, “unless the skin stays very very wet, it’s like your face is on fire.”
Suddenly, there’s expo publicist Howard again. Unlike Alvin, says Howard, her peel penetrated “one layer below” the CO2 laser resurfacing, making it that much more painful. But look at the results! “I’m 65,” she says, again. “Feel my skin. Soft isn’t it?”
All that painful and disfiguring post-op time has led to the growth of a satellite industry. Knapp has developed Lycogel, a silica-gel-based makeup designed to camouflage post-op faces that are, well, too scary to go out in public. And unlike regular makeup, it won’t burn when applied to raw flesh. “These people are suffering,” says Knapp. “You’re down for months. Your kids are going to look at you and run away screaming. It’s actually very negative.”
Exhibitor Andrea Ladmer stood in front of a sign denouncing frozen peas. On a table in front of her sat several mannequin heads swathed in beige wraps and eye masks in apparent homage to the Invisible Man. “I had a face-lift two years ago and I wanted to cut my head off and put it in the freezer,” she said. “Instead I decided to put the freezer on my head.”
Ladmer invented the Goldy, a makeshift turban with sleeves to hold glycerin ice packs to numb the bruised flesh and painful sutures. So instead of holding bags of frozen peas on your face, she says, the Goldy is “a kinder, more humane way to recover.”
Meanwhile in the main lecture space, Garth Fisher, the superstar plastic surgeon from “Extreme Makeover,” detailed his successes. Behind him was a before-and-after slide of one of three sisters who had the dreaded double chin. He “corrected” all three. “When I got through, I wanted to go home and collapse,” he said. “I just thanked Mom and Dad for not bringing four into the world.”
Up close, Fisher has an intimidating tan and equally startling bright smile. As two women with autograph pens and programs waited nearby, he explained how people always ask him whether plastic surgery on TV develops unhealthy expectations of the results.
“I don’t think it does,” he says. “All these people [on the show] are in pain ... but there’s just not enough time to show all that stuff.” But as he notes, no one is forced to have plastic surgery. “I don’t drive people into my office in a police car.”
