You can tell when an industry or company has its back to the wall because it starts spinning the bad news so fast that Ginger Rogers would get dizzy. Late in July the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced in the new issue of the Lancet Oncology that the evidence was unequivocal: tanning bed use increases the odds of developing melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. In fact, the organization, which until now has avoided stating flatly that tanning beds and sun lamps cause cancer, moved tanning beds to its highest cancer risk category: “carcinogenic to humans,” a designation shared by such substances as tobacco and mustard gas. It reported that an analysis of clinical research shows that teens and young adults under age 30 who regularly use tanning beds increase their melanoma risk by a staggering 75 percent.
News doesn’t get more damning than that, and it only reinforces the point we have made so often in our book, on this blog and in our other writings: avoiding excessive sun exposure is one of the most important steps you can take to improve not only the health of your skin but your overall health. The trouble is, the tanning salon industry isn’t, as you would expect, turning cartwheels over this news. For years, the industry has caught a great deal of flack for opening up new salons directly across from high schools in an obvious attempt to woo young girls looking to get bronzed before prom. So it’s not surprising that the official response of the industry was this, from an MSNBC story:
“The fact that the IARC has put tanning bed use in the same category as sunlight is hardly newsworthy,” said Dan Humiston, president of the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA). “The UV light from a tanning bed is equivalent to UV light from the sun, which has had a group 1 classification since 1992. Some other items in this category are red wine, beer and salted fish. The ITA has always emphasized the importance of moderation when it comes to UV light from either the sun or a tanning bed.”
That is more than a little disingenuous. The IARC Group 1 classification includes ethanol as a carcinogen, a type of alcohol that is indeed found in alcoholic beverages like red wine and beer. But drinking a glass of red wine is hardly the same as drinking pure ethanol, and it’s probably safe to say that the proven health benefits of red wine also counterbalance the cancer risks. This comes across as desperate spin from an industry that’s heard its death knell…maybe.
That brings up the real point: will this announcement change behavior. There are some positive signs already: MSNBC also reports that tanning salons around the country have seen a spike in cancellations after this cancer information was made public. But how long will that last? If history is any indication, teens who believe they are immortal will revert back to old habits unless this new information is followed with continuing education. So if you’re the parent of a young woman (or man, since guys tan, too), take it upon yourself to learn more about this announcement, the dangers of tanning beds, and melanoma in general, and talk to your kids. You can learn more here:
Coming from different aspects of the beauty continuum as we do, we’ve both had a longstanding interest in beauty and the perception of beauty and how they can impact how people feel about themselves and one another. Two of the biggest things to impact teens’ psyches are weight/body issues and acne, so we decided it would be interesting to conduct an image-based study quantifying exactly how acne can alter others’ perception of teens. The study coincided with National Acne Awareness Month, and the results were very interesting.
Working with the American Acne & Rosacea Society (AARS), we asked thousands of teens and adults to offer their first impressions of teens based only on photos of their face. One face was without acne and one had been digitally enhanced with acne. The results showed that teens with acne are more likely than teens without acne to be perceived as shy (39% vs. 27%), nerdy (31% vs. 17%), and lonely (23% vs. 13%). Perhaps not surprisingly, the opposite also proved true: teens without acne were more commonly perceived as self-confident (42% vs. 25%), happy (50% vs. 35%), and leaders vs. followers (49% vs. 29%).
We were expecting the results of the study to show that having acne would be difficult for teens, which it does, but what we both found most distressing was the extent to which acne can really skew the way society perceives teens. We live in a very visual society and based on the survey results, people do make snap judgments about teens with acne. The results illustrate the fact that unfortunately, acne does play a role in how teens are viewed by both their peers and adults. So, what starts as a purely medical condition can have emotional and psychological implications for young people who are often already dealing with social, sexual and cultural chaos.
Our colleague Dr. Diane Berson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Dermatology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a founding board member of AARS said, “What surprised me most about the survey was confirming the length teens will go to improve their acne and what they are willing to sacrifice.” According to the study, if they could have clearer skin, 59% of teens would go cold turkey on Facebook for one year, 30% would give up dating for 12 months, 13% would take their mom or dad to the prom (now that’s a sacrifice), and 11% would be OK with seeing their grade point average drop. That’s testament to the desperation with which teens view acne and its role as a kind of marker of social stigma—a modern-day Scarlet Letter, if you will.
To us, this indicates a strong and urgent need to connect with teens about what acne is and who develops it so that we can bust the myths surrounding it and foster greater self-esteem in those unfortunate enough to develop it. Human beings of any age have a hard enough separating appearance from intelligence and moral character. How much more difficult must it be for youths who are in the process of slowly (and sometimes painfully) discovering who they are and developing own their body image? By teaching teens that acne is a disease, not a verdict, perhaps we can help foster greater understanding and kindness while making one of the obstacles on the path to adulthood a little easier to climb.
We’re entering the summer travel season, and that means a lot more time in airports, packing luggage while trying to figure out what you can leave behind (answer: always more than you’d like to), and attempting to eat and drink healthy while you’re going 100 miles an hour with your hair on fire. Even with the recession, you’re probably planning on taking at least a scaled-back vacation, probably someplace sunny and warm. And even though there may be relaxation awaiting you, let’s face it: getting to and from your destination can tax even someone with near-perfect, serene Inner Beauty. So, from us to you as we think about our own escapes to some paradise where mobile phones don’t work, some travel tips for keeping staying beautiful everywhere from the rental car desk to a white sand beach:
Take just the essentials. You’re not going to be able to take your entire medicine cabinet, so just choose the skin care products you must have: sunscreen, moisturizer (moisturizer with sunscreen is even better, as long as it’s broad spectrum), cleanser, and some basic makeup like foundation, lip liner, and so on. You’ll have less to carry and spend a lot less time of your valuable vacation in front of the mirror. Plus, fewer items means fewer chances of getting stuck at airport security.
Protect yourself from the sun. We won’t even go into the risks of melanoma; you’ve heard those before, and there’s no more important reason to minimize your sun exposure. But beyond that, there’s the simple fact that if you’re lying on the beach for a week with unprotected skin, you’re doing damage. In the short term, you’re going to burn and peel, and along with being miserably painful that is never attractive. In the long term, you’re damaging collagen and dehydrating your skin so that you’re more likely to develop crepey, leathery skin on your face and chest as you age. Be smart: wear a sunscreen with at least 30 spf, reapply it every 2 hours, wear a sun hat and when you’re on the beach, sit under an umbrella.
Hydrate. The air in an aircraft is less humid than outside air, so it’s a perfect place to start drinking extra water and to keep hydrating throughout your trip. Hydration keeps your digestion consistent, plumps your skin, cools your body when you’re in the sun, and curbs your appetite so you can resist going crazy on your cruise ship’s 24-hour all you can eat seafood and dessert bar.
Bring healthy snacks. My oh my, the things we eat when we’re on the run. We grab a soda at the airport store, a soggy wrap on the plane for $8, a bag of nuts in the destination airport, then a late sandwich or pizza at the hotel, because the restaurant is closed when we arrive. At all adds up to more sodium, fat, and calories than we need, which can mean extra pounds at the end of a vacation, and that’s not good for anyone’s inner or outer beauty. So pack healthy snacks from the start: fruit, nuts, nutrition bars, whole juice (not apple or grape juice, which are packed with sugar), even healthy sandwiches on whole grain bread. You’ll eat better, save money, feel better and look slimmer when you head back home.
Take it all in stride. Inner Beauty may suffer most during travel. Nothing ever goes perfectly: there are delays, baggage problems, botched orders, more delays, and so on. If you go into your trip assuming you’re entitled to have every stage of your journey go perfectly, you’re going to be miserable and make everyone around you miserable. Instead, remember to be Zen about your travels. Accept that some things will go wrong, but keep in mind that they are small bumps on your way to a wonderful respite from daily life. A little perspective will reduce your stress level and help you feel more beautiful when you arrive.
Be kind. We once heard an airline pilot share the key to getting great service at the airport: be kind to the airline staff. When there’s a flight delay or some other problem, passengers inevitably treat airport staff like dirt, call them stupid, shake their fists and so on. What the pilot meant was that being kind—and we mean over-the-top, “Can I get you a drink, you look like you’re having a rough time” kind—to airline gate agents and other people can really help you get where you’re going. But more important than that, it makes you feel better. Why stand around with your teeth clenched getting angry when you can be nice to someone else and make yourself feel wonderful as well?
Unplug. You’re on vacation. The office will function and the world will turn even if you leave your mobile phone, Blackberry and laptop at home. We all work hard 50 weeks a year; for two weeks, we need to focus only on ourselves, on the present moment. Disconnect from the grid and practice mindfulness. Savor the moments of your trip. You might not get another one for a while.
This week, the news media has been abuzz with coverage and analysis of Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office. While that’s traditional, we would like to start a new tradition of feting the First Lady after her first 100 days as the nation’s most visible wife and mother. And who better to start with than Michelle Obama? There’s probably never been a woman in a better position to transform the American image of beauty—on the inside and the outside—than the First Lady.
Let’s break it down according to the four stages of the Beauty-Brain Loop, which we introduced in our book, The Beauty Prescription: Inner Beauty, Health, Outer Beauty and Environment…
Inner Beauty: There has never been a first lady in our lifetimes who has been such a powerful person in her own right. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt was as strong an influence on culture, but she didn’t have Michelle’s style and grace to go along with the strength and resolve. Ms. Obama exudes confidence and a sense of purpose, but it goes beyond that. Perhaps it’s because of her generation: she’s the first First Lady to come of age in the feminist era when it was no longer acceptable for women to smile in the background while their husbands dominated the podium. Were she not Mrs. Barack Obama, Michelle would still be arresting and no doubt leave a big mark on the world.
But as the wife of the president, she has done more to show her Inner Beauty. She has somehow managed to strike the perfect balance between the brilliant lawyer, the career woman driven to bring positive change to the country, and the wife and mother trying to help her family get through the impossible transition into the White House as easily as possible. As her husband was entering the Oval Office, her focus shifted to her daughters: getting them set up in school, getting them a dog, making sure they had time with their father every day at the breakfast table and doing homework. She was a mother and wife first, a First Lady second. Perhaps that’s why, according to America Online, her approval ratings are higher than the president’s. She knows what matters most to her and gives her joy: her family. That’s where her attention goes. She has already declared that much of her attention will go to helping American families—especially military families. Part of her Inner Beauty is knowing who she is, what she is and what in important to her and apologizing for none of it.
Health: One of the first projects Michelle took on was to plant a “kitchen garden” on the White House lawn with the aid of some DC schoolchildren. She said that its purpose, other than to give her family fresh vegetables to eat, was to promote healthy eating and home gardening. Can you imagine Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton down in the dirt planting carrots? Neither can we. The insistence on being her own person, despite what protocol or tradition might dictate, is as much a part of Michelle’s Inner Beauty as her dedication to Health. And after all, her husband is pretty much shattering tradition as the first African-American president.
The First Lady, because she tends to focus on “soft” issues such as school and healthcare, can have a huge impact on these vital areas of our country. It’s great to see Ms. Obama already working on spreading the gospel of health and living a healthy, balanced lifestyle in what can be the world’s most stressful environment.
Outer Beauty: This is the most obvious difference in Michelle versus past First Ladies. She’s not dainty. She’s bold and beautiful. She’s got curves and she’s not afraid to show them. She’s also got biceps and she’s not afraid to display them, either. And of course, she’s African-American. She is already setting a new beauty standard for black women in this country, a standard that implicity says you can be feminine and stylish but still strong, forceful and proud of your heritage.
Certainly, Michelle has set the fashion world on its ear with her bold style, starting with the still-talked about dress she wore on election night. She’s no wallflower, no Jackie O with pillbox hats. The first Michelle Obama fashion book is about to hit bookstores, and she’s all over the covers of major magazines from Vogue and Ebony to Essence and People. But it’s not just her striking looks or sense of bold style that makes her so magnetic, we think. It’s also that she’s so grounded, so clearly happy. Half of her magazine covers are shots with her family, and she clearly loves being a wife and mother. That makes her gorgeous. There are plenty of women in the world who are more physically stunning than Michelle Obama; there are few if any in the public eye who seem so radiantly happy, balanced and confident in their looks and their lives.
That said, she’s also making it more than OK to be a statuesque, curvaceous, toned, strong-boned lady. She’s taking back some of the territory claimed in recent years by the underfed, size zero waif, and that’s just fine by us.
Environment: What could say more about Michelle’s effect on the Environment than the fact that she still has date nights with her husband, even if they are in Prague? The world’s most powerful man and his wife still find time to snuggle over a romantic bottle of wine? OK, it’s a little less romantic when you add all the Secret Service agents, but that’s not the point. The point is, it sends a message: if the president and First Lady can find time in their schedules for some alone time, can’t the rest of us turn off the TV, quit Twittering and sit down over candlelight with the ones we love?
Michelle Obama seems determined to use her place as an icon for women and African-Americans to make the world a better place. Whether that comes as a result of her total devotion to her family, her dedication to healthful living, her style, her work with families or some other project, she is sending a powerful message to the world through her example: no one can define you but you. It’s an incredibly positive message for self-esteem. During the campaign and after, political pundits have tried to define her as an angry black woman, an America hater, someone who defied protocol and so on. Michelle hasn’t cared, and she hasn’t apologized. She has nothing to apologize for, because no woman should ever apologize for takign on the role and following the path that fills her life with love, purpose and joy.
You go, Michelle. We give you an A+ for your first 100 days as one of the defining new icons of beauty. We can’t wait to see what the next three-and-three-quarters (and maybe more) years will bring.
It doesn’t take much detective work to see that diet books are an obsession in our culture. All it takes is walking into your neighborhood Barnes & Noble and looking at the front “dump bin,” the pyramid-like stack of nonfiction books near the entrance of most stores. There, at any given time, you’ll find six to ten diet books stacked up like cordwood: flat belly diets, over 50 diets, five-minute diets, diets for men, celebrity diets and more. Diet books are among the most consistently popular genre of nonfiction, even though time and time again, we’ve seen that fad diets rarely work for keeping weight off over the long term. Heck, our publisher even talked to us about a diet book as a follow-up to The Beauty Prescription.
What does our seeming obsession with diet books say about us as a culture? We’ll give you some multiple choice options:
We’re obsessed with being as thin as the celebrities we see on the covers of magazines (forgetting that they have chefs and personal trainers and many hours a day to devote to just staying in shape).
We’re eager to believe the hype about a fast, easy weight loss miracle if it hides the simple truth that to lose weight over the long term we have to eat less and move more.
We consistently feel bad about our bodies thanks to pressure from a culture that promotes unrealistic body images.
All of the above.
We don’t know about you, but we’re going with #4. Basically, the multi-billion dollar diet industry (which encompasses a lot more than books) thrives in a rich soil of wishful thinking and willful self-deception, as we convince ourselves that THIS diet, THIS time, will do the trick and keep us thin and healthy without sacrifice. This all points to a national problem with accepting some realities about weight, health and beauty. These are as follows:
You don’t have to be thin to be healthy. It helps, but there are plenty of people who are endomorphs (the body type that retains fat and loses weight slowly) who are fit, eat well and exercise regularly. There are also plenty of thin folks who smoke to suppress their hunger or simply don’t eat enough and are malnourished.
It’s more important to be active than thin. Studies have shown over and over that physically active overweight people do better on tests for heart disease and diabetes risk factors than thin sedentary people.
The only way to consistently lose weight and keep it off is to permanently change your lifestyle. Move more, eat less, give up some unhealthy foods and dedicate yourself to working out 5-6 days a week for life. There are no shortcuts, sorry.
It is far more attractive to be a bit overweight but happy and accepting of yourself and your inner beauty than to be thin, always worried about what you eat and beat yourself up when you gain an ounce. Self-love is beautiful; self-loathing is not.
We would love to write a diet book for the inner self, perhaps about losing the excess “pounds” of guilt, resentment, shame or envy that seem to drive so many women in our culture to starve themselves in the name of beauty. Perhaps someday, we will. Tell us, what kind of diet book would YOU like to see?
We’ve said all along that aging wasn’t strictly a biological issue. Now there’s some proof that we’re right. A new study (read the story about it here) by Dr. Bahman Guyuron, chairman of the department of plastic surgery at the University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University, has revealed that identical twins, who are genetically programmed to age in the same way, can actually show different facial signs of aging depending on their lifestyles and life experiences. We find this especially interesting because it suggests that your choices on how to view the world and your relationships with others can have a tangible effect on your Outer Beauty, and indeed can affect the entire Beauty-Brain Loop.
The researchers recruited nearly 200 sets of identical female twins who were attending an annual twin festival in the aptly-named Twinsburg, Ohio. They collected photos of each set of twins and asked an independent panel to review each pair and assess whether one twin looked older than another.
They found several factors influenced facial aging, including sun exposure and smoking. Based on the assessment, 10 years of smoking added about 2.5 additional years of aging to a twin’s face, compared to a twin who didn’t smoke. Sun exposure, particularly among those who spent a lot of time outside playing golf or tennis, also increased the appearance of aging.
Stress also appeared to be a factor in aging. Divorced twins appeared, on average, at least two years older than a twin who was married or widowed.
The study also found that users of antidepressants such as Prozac also appeared older, raising speculation that perhaps the chemical components of the drugs affected facial muscles or tissues in some way. Interestingly, weight loss was both white and black hat in terms of aging. Women who lost weight before age 40 looked younger, but women who were heavier after 40 actually appeared more youthful than their slimmer siblings, suggesting that fat loss may somehow affect collagen and the skin’s natural moisture content.
What’s really interesting about this is that it puts responsibility for how your face looks as you age squarely on the shoulders of nurture, not nature. Sure, genetics play a role in everything from your odds of developing skin cancer to your propensity for developing bags under your eyes. But overall, the choices you make for your diet, your recreation, your relationships and your attitude toward living are what really determine how well you age and how your face shows the years.
It makes sense that stress is a major factor: the release of powerful stress hormones like cortisol can cause the body to release oils, provoke breakouts and damage skin in the long-term. And there’s nothing worse than smoking, which produces an oxidative reaction that damages the skin and collagen at the cellular level. What’s positive about this news is that it means you can control, to a remarkable extent, how your face ages with the choices you make. It means that your Inner Beauty—your self-esteem, love and ability to see beauty in others—directly impacts your exterior.
So to give yourself the best odds of aging gracefully, stick to the basics first. Eat well. Exercise. Protect yourself from the sun. Don’t smoke. Breathe. Live with joy and find healthy ways to manage stress. Find a doctor you trust and maintain your overall health. Anything else you do on top of those choices, from spending on cosmetics and skin care products to choosing dermatological procedures, is only going to be effective if you’ve given yourself a great foundation for lifelong beauty.
Haven’t we been over this before? We mean the whole battle over smoking being cool. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we beauty docs were either little girls or not even twinkles in our parents’ eyes, smoking in movies and TV was all the rage. If you were a femme fatale, detective or tough guy, you had to be wreathed in cigarette smoke. But by the 1990s society and public health efforts had effectively countered the image of smoking as the essence of coolness, in part with smoking bans and advertising like the famous faux-Marlboro billboards where one cowboy says to another, “Bob, I’ve got cancer.” Essentially, we thought we had this smoking thing licked, but apparently—and disturbingly—we were wrong.
Now comes a study from the University of Staffordshire in the UK showing that Brits age 17-24 worry about the effects of smoking on their appearance but most don’t intend to consider quitting until they see visible signs of damage. Now, smoking has always been more of an issue in Europe, where it’s widespread, but this is a very dangerous attitude, especially if it’s reflected here in the U.S. First of all, damage to skin and teeth occurs at the microscopic level long before it’s visible to the naked eye. Second, and perhaps more important, smoking may be the single most damaging thing you can do to your general health, and as we’ve said before, health is beautiful. Health is a stage of the Beauty-Brain Loop, so if you negatively impact your health, you’re going to harm all the other aspects of your beauty.
Public officials in the UK have said that they intend to use the results of the study to create a series of new public service advertisements highlighting the ways in which smoking can damage the looks of appearance-conscious young people. Well done, but why wait? Let’s bring the news to the people right now! These are some of the major ways in which cigarette smoking damages your skin, hair, teeth, and overall exterior:
Smoking releases free radicals in your lungs, producing an inflammation response throughout the body. This affects the skin by accelerating cellular breakdown, producing wrinkles and the gray pallor commonly known as “smoker’s face.”
It reduces the level of oxygen in your blood and thus depletes the collagen in your skin. This can cause sagging and a premature aging.
The reduced circulation caused by smoking also causes the skin to become thinner, making fine lines and wrinkles more noticeable.
It yellows teeth and causes bad breath.
Smoking is also highly addicting because the nicotine and other addictive chemicals go right to the lungs and bloodstream, so it’s very easy to get hooked. Young smokers are very vulnerable to this rapid physiological addiction to tobacco.
We could go on, but why? It’s common knowledge that smoking is terrible for your body, inside and out. We’re not sure that any public service ads are going to dissuade youth, who always think they’re immortal, but it’s worth a try. If you think about the effect that smoking has on Inner Beauty (making you feel bad about being a smoker and not being able to quit) and on Environment (repelling other people who hate the smoke and ruining the area around you), there may be nothing more toxic to the Beauty-Brain Loop. We’ll keep an eye out for similar research in the U.S….and hope for better results.
We like to talk about inner beauty, but outer beauty matters, too, especially as a bellwether of health. And when it comes to skin health, nothing is a greater concern than melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Melanoma is strongly linked to sunburn during childhood and adolescence, but it can strike women (and men) in areas that rarely receive any sun exposure. Melanoma is a difficult cancer to treat; after years of research, the only reliable treatment has been to surgically remove the malignant growth before it becomes more than one millimeter thick. The World Health Organization estimates that there are about 48,000 deaths from melanoma around the world each year.
So it’s pretty exciting to read about a newly released study from the University of Bonn, Germany, in which a “designer molecule” fights melanoma in two ways at the same time. In one line of attack, the molecule acts like a virus, which alerts the body’s immune system to power up and start attacking the tumor cells. In the other line, the molecule uses an aspect of RNA discovered in 2006 by two Nobel laureate scientists to “switch off” a specific gene in the tumor cells, essentially driving them to suicide more reliably than if you’d forced the cells to watch 24 straight hours of reality TV.
The disguised-as-a-virus approach tricked the immune system of the research subject (in this case, a mouse) into aggressively attacking its own malignant cells as though they were an infectious body, while the suicide strategy took advantage of a natural self-destruct mechanism that exists within all cells and keeps them from becoming out-of-control cancer cells. The bottom line of this experiment was that in mice, the double-assault tactic inhibited the growth of melanoma cells that had metastasized to the lungs, and even shrank or eliminated secondary tumors. The researchers caution, however, than what works in mice doesn’t always work in humans, and that more work and study is needed. Fair enough. But it’s safe to say that after years of having nothing but surgery in our arsenal to fight this dangerous cancer, any new advance is a reason for hope.
In the meantime, limit your sun exposure, wear sunscreen, and be sure to get a skin check every year from your general practitioner or a dermatologist. In fact, if you go to your dermatologist for something as routine as Botox, have a skin check while you’re there. Having a suspicious mole removed once in a while is infinitely preferable to enduring melanoma, no matter how much you like the idea of bronzed skin. That’s what self-tanners are for. That way, you can ensure that you stay healthy so you can enjoy being beautiful. And by the way, if you can only afford one skin care product, make it a moisturizing sunscreen with an SPF of at least 45.
One of the most controversial aspects of healthcare in recent years has been the advent of aggressive, “ask your doctor about…” style advertising. It’s blamed for the dramatic increase in the rise of prescription drug use, but it’s also played a role in the increasing popularity of plastic surgery (up 59 percent from 2000 to 2007) and the two-year increase in the average age of patients seeking the top 10 cosmetic procedures (according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery). So many women and men are so eager to look younger than their years that they are apparently willing to believe questionable claims from companies and clinics offering unrealistic plastic surgery results.
If you’ve read our book, The Beauty Prescription, then you know that we’re in favor of plastic surgery—when it’s appropriate. It isn’t always. Any surgery comes with hazards, and often women can achieve more satisfying improvements to their inner and outer beauty by making changes in their lifestyle, such as eating a healthy diet, getting in shape and maintaining a smart skin care regimen. Certainly in some cases plastic surgery can be a blessing, but not when it’s based on misperceptions based on ads that are, frankly, fraudulent. We’re not talking about the airbrushed photos of models in the newspapers; most readers are savvy enough to take those with a grain of salt. We’re talking about breast augmentation clinics that promise breasts that are anatomically impossible, and “lunchtime face lifts” that are little more than snake oil. Such misleading marketing costs patients big money (since many cosmetic procedures are elective and thus not covered by insurance) and puts them at risk.
So bravo to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, which has come out with a strong statement condemning such false advertising at its annual conference. The group called out such practices as clinics that offer “act now” discounts of up to $500 to women who had breast augmentation surgery quickly. You don’t have to be psychic to know that such incentives are bound to lead to rash decisions and bad outcomes, especially among young women who are willing to believe that they can look like Pamela Anderson with three easy payments.
We can only hope that we’ll soon hear the same kind of responsible, ethical talk from the billion-dollar U.S. plastic surgery industry—and it would be even better if it had some sort of regulatory teeth behind it. We’ll keep you posted.
