Whenever they's a wrinkle eating away at vain people, I'll be there.
Whenever they's a cop not doing a double take as a pair of hooters goes
by, I'll be there. . . .. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're in a
gentleman's club an' I'll be in the way trophy wives laugh when they're
gossiping about their nannies' flat butts an' they know their celery,
parsley and air lunch's ready. An' when folks smile like the Joker an'
can't shut their eyes when they sneeze–why, I'll be there.
To think I thought I had it bad.
As Los Angeles Times “Booster Shots” blogger Shari Roan recently revealed, demand for cosmetic surgery fell 12 percent in the U.S. last year; nearly every procedure declined in popularity, typically by 10 percent to 20 percent; and even Botox–plucky, confused, misunderstood Botox–fell by 8.4 percent among women in '08.
Goddamn you, Dow Jones!
]
Roan turned to Dr. Sanjay Grover, a Newport
Beach plastic surgeon and past president of the Orange County Society
of Plastic Surgeons, to get a sense of how ugly things are out there
for your friendly neighborhood boobie cutters. It's ugly, indeed:
Grover said plastic surgeons are reporting dips in business from 20
percent to 40 percent in the first few months of 2009. “. . . I think
people are being more careful about
what they're spending money on,” confided Grover, and one wonders if he
said this with a tear in his eye or if he'd had them filled in
surgically because salty tears spur wrinkles.
Well, gloomy Grover should take his cues from Mr. Sunshine, otherwise known as his cross-town colleague Dr. Michael W. Niccole, founder of CosmetiCare Plastic Surgery
Specialists and — and his press release will tell you — one of “America's Top Plastic Surgeons” by the
Consumer's Research Council of America and one of the regularly
featured surgeons on Discovery Health Channel's Plastic
Surgery, Before and After.
Niccole
says in tough times like these, don't do something drastic, like
choosing to buy your family food over seeing your plastic surgeon.
Simply have him or her work the magic they usually work without a
knife. Among the inexpensive — okay, less expensive — non-surgical treatments out there he cites are Botox, Juvederm, Restylane and
laser hair removal or lasers to reduce facial lines and wrinkles.
He
does advise against simply going to whoever charges the least to inject
poison into your face. Training, experience and safety should always be
factors. “The bargain shopping
approach can end up costing a pretty penny,” he says. “You need to
beware of those who may advertise 'too
good to be true' fees for surgical and non-surgical procedures, to
entice you into something you may not be ready for, financially or
emotionally.” The good doctor says that since he began his practice in
1982 he has repaired thousands of “surgeries gone wrong” suffered by
patients who were motivated by low cost or impulse.
Niccole
has a name for this revolutionary approach to cost-conscious and
generally totally unnecessary procedures: “Beauty on a Budget.” Best of
all, the non-surgical route is not permanent. You can take your new
face out for a test drive, as you would a new car or husband.
Previously in Welcome to the Poorhouse:
Problem Makers Become “Solvers”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.