Today I was asked for my opinion…

on whether Donald Trump’s wife has had plastic surgery. We scrutinised photographs of her in her younger years compared with more recent shots and discussed the possibility of whether she has had Botox, fillers, a nose job or a boob job.

At the end of it all…

I was not able to categorically say whether she had had any of these procedures or not. The problem is that plastic surgery portrayed in the media is usually bad plastic surgery. It is when things have been overdone and people look swollen and out of proportion.

Looking ‘Fake’…

We love to see images of people who were previously natural beauties but have ruined their natural good looks with plastic surgery and now look fake. But this is not what plastic surgery is about. Plastic surgery is about reconstructing defects and restoring the norm. All surgeons who are fully trained in plastic surgery (unfortunately a lot of plastic surgery is performed by non-plastic surgeons, See my blog post here) have gone through training involved in reconstructing injuries caused by trauma or defects that have been present since birth or acquired through disease. Cosmetic surgery is only one small subset of plastic surgery and any plastic surgeon who performs cosmetic surgery will have a background in training in reconstructive surgery. The aim of plastic surgery is not to create people who look like freaks or who look fake, despite what the media portrays.

The aim…

of plastic surgery is to restore people back to how they used to look or to enhance areas where there is a deficiency or the body is out of proportion. Most of my patients want to look natural and do not want to be looked at and commented upon when walking down the street or into a room. Contrary to popular belief I do not walk through the town centre and make a mental note of who I think has had plastic surgery and who has not. Because if it is done correctly the idea is that you cannot tell. Most people do not particularly want anyone to notice or comment on the fact that they might have had plastic surgery. Much more commonly they will get a comment like Your look well or Have you lost weight. It is often not the actual surgery that has caused the most dramatic change because particularly in what I do in cosmetic breast surgery, there are ways to enhance a small bust or hide a large bust using certain clothing, bras or external prostheses.

Body Confidence

The fact is that when people have had surgery, even though you may not be able to tell, the person feels much better in themselves and carries themselves in a different way.
I have some photographs in my portfolio of patients who have had prominent ear correction when they are looking straight into the camera, before and after surgery. Even though the photos are only taken a matter of months between each other the patients look completely transformed and it is not necessarily the ears that are the obvious difference between the two, just the look in the patient’s face as they look so much more confident and self-assured. That is what plastic surgery is about, giving back confidence and self-esteem and not about making people look strange or fake when they walk down the street.

Bad Plastic Surgery

There will always be bad plastic surgery and there will always be cases that we love to look at of people who have changed their body out of proportion with their frame or their features and these will continue to get the media spotlight and the public will continue to think that plastic surgery is unnecessarily vain and a ghastly waste of the skilled surgeon’s time. The patients I see in the clinic will not feature in the media outlets because they are normal people who just want to look in proportion and want to feel comfortable in their own skin. They do not do it for anyone else and the idea is that you will not be able to tell whether they have had anything done or not.

Good Plastic Surgery

This is good plastic surgery and so whether it is healthy living, a good diet and good genes that makes Mrs Trump look great, or a skilled plastic surgeon, I am afraid I cannot say.