When Plastic Surgery Became a Product

Dr. Jason Hall:

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So there was a time when plastic surgery was a secret that was talked about in recovery rooms and hidden behind oversized sunglasses. It was kind of a high cost medical intervention that was pretty much strictly reserved for the elite. Now fast forward to today, where you can get Botox in the mall in between like Cinnabon and Sephora. You can finance new bodies with monthly subscriptions, and you can shop for surgeon on Tiktok while you're having your lunch. But when a surgical procedure becomes a retail transaction, what happens to the patient? Today? We're pulling back the curtain on the commoditization of plastic surgery. You bill, welcome to the Trillium show, where we can talk about the ins and outs of the cosmetic industry, and I can help you decipher all the junk that's out there, filling the internet and filling your social media feed. The goal here is to make you a more informed consumer and not fall for all the marketing hype that our industry is famous for I'm your host, board certified plastic surgeon and author of The Art of aging. Dr Jason Hall, it wasn't long ago when plastic surgery was kind of a shadowy, hush, hush medical specialty and has moved out into the bright lights of the retail space. In this show, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about how that happened, and we give you a little bit of background about plastic surgery. We're going to talk about how it transitioned from a very quiet, kind of whispered in hair salons and side conversations at dinner parties into being out there in front of everybody. We're going to talk about the role of social media. We're going to talk about med spas, and we're going to talk about the psychological shift from fixing to optimizing. Little bit of background, plastic surgery is one of the newer specialties of medicine. It really started right around World War One with Battlefield injuries. Sir Hill Gillies during World War One was really the father of plastic surgery, where he was reconstructing some of these horrific trench injuries that occurred during the battles in Europe. Over time, the knowledge that we gained from reconstruction got shifted into sort of an optimization space. We started, instead of making the horrific injuries better and making people functional, we started optimizing things. We started taking normal and making it better. That process really happened over the course of the 50s, 60s and 70s, but was really reserved for Hollywood elites, movie stars, the rich and famous, and was really rarely talked about. That turning point, really, in my mind, came in the 1990s and 2000s with TV shows like extreme makeover and nip talk that kind of pushed plastic surgery into the forefront and really began to take some of the mystique away from cosmetic surgery shifting forward a little bit to today. Open Instagram, open Tiktok, open Facebook, open any of the social media apps, and you'll see plastic surgery transformations. You'll see filtered images of people who were kind of super optimal thanks to either plastic surgery or now AI. And it has turned into one of these specialties that we talk about all the time. In the same vein, it's also led to kind of a sameness, a homogenization of look. You see it all over the internet. You see the BBL, the you know, the huge Kardashian butt. You see the fox eye trend. You see women with lips that don't even closely resemble normal. And we've kind of turned the, you know, what used to be, a looking more natural and looking better, looking younger than you actually are, into this kind of one size fits all. Everybody looks the same kind of thing. And whether you think that's good or bad, you can't deny that it's something that's happened. You're also starting to see well, starting you see a lot on the internet now people documenting their surgery journeys and little tip most of these are paid ads. Essentially, you see influencers touting their breast augmentation journey or their tummy tuck journey on the internet, and usually that's done in exchange for heavily discounted or free services. You know, we've gotten to where surgeons and influencers alike are treating a surgical procedure like a brand collaboration, and it wasn't long ago that things like that were frowned upon by ourselves. Societies, but with the rise of social media, these are largely ignored. You can couple that with the rise of the Med Spa. Not that med spas are bad. We've talked about them before, non surgical treatments also not bad. But what you've seen is cosmetic improvements move from surgeons offices, move from medical offices to shopping malls to strip malls to storefronts, much like any of the luxury brands, or not even luxury brands that you know and love have done, you know a lot of these non surgical treatments specifically, but even surgeries now have been turned into medical treatments that you can get, just like you would walk in and buy a skin cream at Sephora. Walk in, get your procedure, walk out. They've it's almost turned into a maintenance procedure as much as anything else, not that again, not that those are bad, but it serves to demystify and commodify or commoditize the plastic surgery experience for both patients and for their surgeons. The danger here is that when surgery, specifically cosmetic surgery becomes a commodity. Then focus shifts from experience quality to price. And you see that with the rise of surgical tourism. You've seen that with the rise of surgery now happening in strip malls instead of dedicated operating rooms. Safety kind of takes a back seat to speed and price, and when that happens, the person who actually pays the price ends up being the patient, especially if they have a problem. You know, this safety issue is one of the issues that has suffered as a result of plastic surgery being largely commoditized. You also have to look at it as you know what has happened or what is happening to the relationship between the patient and the surgeon. Historically, the patient, Doctor relationship is the bedrock of any medical specialty, any medical or surgical treatment, and when speed and volume end up becoming the driver that suffers, you know, patients start to be looked at as numbers. Instead of looking at that person as an individual, it's there, whoever is filling the 15 minute time slot that we have allotted for. You know that injectable treatment or that surgical consultation? You know you're seeing surgical consultations, which really are designed and the purpose of a surgical consultation is for the surgeon and the patient to develop a relationship, for the surgeon to examine and talk to the patient, to make sure that their goals are aligned, to make sure that what they're looking for is reasonable. And when those are done virtually, it's really difficult to do that. When those are done in a, you know, 10 minute window, a 15 minute window, those are really done. Those really difficult to do that when those are done by somebody who's not a surgeon. You know, when you're your surgical consultation is being done by one of the nursing staff. You can't do that, you don't have a relationship. You don't really know your doctor, you don't really know who's treating you, and they don't really know you. And if and when problems happen, because problems happen despite our best intentions and despite doing everything right, problems still happen. It's easy to just walk away and go find the next person to try and fix it, because you don't have that relationship with your surgeon. There's not that trust there, and the ability and desire to work through problems is non existent, largely. So, what do we do about that? That's the big question. What do we do? How do we fight the commoditization of plastic surgery? And I think the answer to that, least the way that I've answered that question, is not to focus on volume, not to focus on moving people through as quickly as possible. Is not to focus on trying to do a set number of procedures every single day and look at it as a sales interaction, but remember that the doctor patient relationship the console. Result, the relationship that you develop during that time is really the goal. And if that means you're not a good candidate for surgery, then that's what that means. That means that I'm not the surgeon for you, then that's what that means, that time's not wasted, that time is valuable, and it's it's valuable for you as a patient's valuable for me as a surgeon. The other part of that is really more of a question, Has commoditizing surgery led it to some of the outcomes that you see, and how do we prevent those? And some of that is by saying no, no, no. Lips that look like bicycle tires are not natural. Breasts that are 1000 CCS apiece is not natural. It's not a good look. And no, we're not going to do that, because you're not going to like the way that that looks. The final question is really a question for you. Patience is what you're seeing now on Instagram, on Tiktok, in magazines. Is that the product of what's become a giant industry, or is that the product of someone who's legitimately trying to reclaim their youth, improve what's already, what they already have. And I'm interested to hear your thoughts, because I don't know the right answer. Leave me a comment. Let me know what you think you know is, is the commoditization of Plastic Surgery empowerment, or is it just the newest form of social pressure. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show. You.