Are you overdosing on beauty?

Wanting that line-free look
Great, right? Except that now I am fighting an urge to get everything zapped: arms, legs, chest, the works. I could be smooth and creamy! I know lasers are not a panacea. Dr. Gibstein warned me they are over-recommended and, if used incorrectly, can lead to burns, pigmentation and scarring. Yet right now, the memory of the pain and the smell of my own charred flesh are the only things holding me back from offering myself up for more barbecuing.

A person doesn’t have to look like Michael Jackson or Jocelyn Wildenstein to be considered overdone; there are often more subtle signs. A writer and former actress who lives in the Land of Too Much Surgery (aka the Upper East Side of New York City) says she has seen them all, including blinding shininess from overzealous peeling and injections (fact: skin with no movement or wrinkles reflects more light) and so much filler used to plump up the nasolabial folds around the mouth that a woman erases them altogether. “The only person who looks normal without nasolabial folds is a 3-year-old. They’re a part of the human anatomy!” says the writer, who asked self not to publish her name, even though she’s pleased with the minor work she’s had done. (Why should strangers know she’s had any work at all?)

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And, of course, there’s that miraculously line-free look I begged Dr. Gibstein for. “The goal is not to get rid of all lines; the goal is to look better,” says Michael Kane, M.D., of New York City, one of the first plastic surgeons to use the botulinum toxin for cosmetic purposes. “It’s deeply disturbing when you see some actresses smile, and nothing seems to happen around the eyes. Nothing.”

Beyond any other area, surgeons say, the lips are where young women want more, more, more. That’s despite witnessing disastrous trout-pouts on celebrities — most notably, Meg Ryan — that have scared me away from the idea. Sometimes, women will start out plumping lips moderately, using fat, collagen or a filler such as AlloDerm, Juvéderm or Restylane, and get lips that look natural. But by not waiting until the filler dissipates completely, they’ll get incrementally larger lips the second time, and the third … it’s like putting too much air in a tire. “You can’t make a small lip big. You can make a small lip look bigger,” Dr. Gibstein says. “Nevertheless, there are lots of people for whom bigger lips are never big enough.”

‘Have you done something different?’
So how do women (for instance, me) keep from going too far? “Certainly it helps to have a board-certified surgeon with a busy practice, who doesn’t see you as a paycheck, and whom you can trust,” Dr. Rosen says. “But another sign is if friends are beginning to notice and make comments beyond, ‘Hey, you look great!’ If people point out a specific area, it’s a telltale sign that it’s out of balance with your other features.” People might not say, “Wow, you got a lip full of plastic there! So interesting that your face has stopped moving!” But there might be comments in the realm of “Have you done something different?” Not “good.” Different.

“Patients sometimes forget — and more dangerous, surgeons forget — that doctors should be the final gatekeeper of what should and shouldn’t be done,” Dr. Rosen adds. A woman needs to listen to family and friends when they question her latest cosmetic adventure. And when a physician tells someone to put on the brakes, she should by all means do so.

I no longer want to look like Ms. Perfect McCreamy, but occasionally (indeed, more frequently than I’d like to admit), Dr. Katz’s laser sings its siren song in my ear. Still, when it comes to self-improvement, I have vowed to tiptoe, not leap. I’m headed to that high school reunion in a little black dress, a spray-on tan, professional hair and makeup (you go to these things only once, right?) and, yes, with a little bit of Botox to smooth out the line between my eyes. Although I know I could find a surgeon to erase my crow’s-feet, I won’t. I kinda like that when I smile, my eyes smile, too. Those crow’s-feet are getting more noticeable. But then, I tell myself my classmates will see I’ve had a lot to smile about.    

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