Britain's Plastic Surgeons ask for truth in advertising

A big Cheers(!) to our colleagues 'across the pond' who are encouraging more professionalism in the business of cosmetic Plastic Surgery.

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has made a position statement that digitally enhanced pictures of bikini-clad women in writhing poses should be banned in advertisements as they mislead patients about expected results. BAAPS has singled out one chain of cosmetic clinics for particularly egregious promotion, pointing to an ad by the West One Clinic franchise which used models in advertisements that are "anatomically impossible".

Below is the wasp-waisted model with gi-normous breasts that apparently started this discussion. It clearly looks to me like she's been "morphed" with Photoshop to narrow her waist in relation to her trunk.


A second promotion offers a £250 ($462.55 USD by today's exchange rate) discount to customers as an incentive to have the surgery quickly, while a third offers a "lunchtime facelift", which arguably plays a little fast and loose by with downtown and recovery for short-scar facelift procedures.

This education that BAAPS is not a call per se for limiting all cosmetic surgery procedures, but rather it is a desire to see a more safe, thoughtful, and informed process take place when someone is considering surgery. It is impossible to remove unrealistic body images from pop culture, as both men and women strive for whatever form is popular in their era. What we do owe patients are frank discussions about the limits and morbidity of surgery minus the "magic brush" function of computer photo editing.



Rob