The plastic truth

'Good' plastic surgery...

... means scoring magazine covers

... and perpetuating an illusion

A pet hate of mine is the shows sometimes on commercial TV (Extreme Makeover and others of that ilk) that unashamedly promote plastic surgery. Plastic surgery is not a happy, shiny world filled with newly glamourous people. It's populated by people who've made themselves look less human- their faces puffy, their lips misshapen and lumpy, their capability for expression diminished.

So it was nice, for once, to see an honest article on plastic surgery (in this case, breast implants) in the media.

[Professor Donald Marshall] a Melbourne plastic surgeon and medico-legal consultant with 40 years' experience, has recently published Your Breasts and Plastic Surgery: Enlargement, Reduction, Reconstruction.

"The book portrays what I think should be in a consultation with a plastic surgeon," he says. "The good and the bad, which is often denied women in the way breast surgery is presented at the moment."

[...]

"Surgery cannot produce a 'normal breast'; there is always some scarring," Marshall writes, "and it is essential that patients are aware of the shortcomings of surgery, which must be balanced against the perceived advantages."

[...]

"So many women have seen images in magazines and other media of a spectacularly good result and do not realise that is only a very small percentage of cases.

[...]

Every woman who has breast implants will get some degree of fibrous scarring around the prosthesis, Professor Donald Marshall says. Most women will not notice it or will not be bothered by it, but in some case the tissue tightens more than in others and it can squeeze the implants much "like tightening a string around a balloon".

The current rate of troublesome "capsular contracture", as it is known, stands at about 10 per cent after five years, Marshall says. It can be surgically corrected but returns in half of such cases.

Home made, not homegrown.