Tuesday, February 12, 2013



          Nothing warms up the winter more than Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue and nothing sums up our culture’s obsession with the female body more adroitly.  As an intermittent subscriber and a yearly viewer it’s pretty clear to see that the standard for attractiveness, at least to a certain male audience, changes from year to year.  When I was young it was thin, blond, and American.    Now it is curves, multicultural, and still mostly blond.  It is no different in my practice which is based in the New York City area and is rather cosmopolitan.  I see almost every nationality here and though there might be big differences amongst them, the general trend is still there.  Curves are in and it doesn’t matter if it’s the top or the bottom. But it’s also about proportion.  Almost none of my patients want to be DD’s.  They want to be a full C so that they look good but not a caricature.   As for buttock shaping, I tell them that it is shaping.  Not only adding fat to the buttock area, but also removing fat from the surrounding area to give them a more defined backside.  After I tell the patients that, my staff laughs and says the same thing. “Great Dr. Fallek, but make sure you give them even more than you think, because that’s what women want.”
                I think that by the time a patient shows up in my office, she knows what she wants.  She may not know exactly if it’s a lift or an implant but she knows what she is looking to improve.  For body contouring, it’s usually a bimodal peak.  It’s either something they’ve been thinking about since they were teenagers or early 20’s or in the time period after pregnancy.  And for almost all of my patients, they are right.  They do need improvement in that area.  I don’t have the hard statistics which are available every year from our society’s but if we were to factor out the economic issues, it’s pretty clear that the number of patients wanting  these procedures are going up.  For breast augmentation, I believe it’s because we now have a great product to give patients.  Patients are extremely happy with the newer silicone implants and they are telling their friends and showing them off.  As for buttock lifts/augmentations yes, the media is pushing it.  Yes, the designers are showing it. Yes, yes, yes, everyone wants the J-LO or Karshadian buttocks but I think it’s more profound than that.  We are a multicultural nation now with different ideals of beauty and what makes a woman beautiful.  Sports has always been considered as being a  mirror to that  a nation’s society.  It’s only once a year and is certainly no longer as titillating  as it used to be but when that nation’s iconic sports magazine shows off women, I belief we all have to take a look and see what’s in that mirror too.