Cultural Differences in Plastic Surgery
Posted Under: Studies Trends
Cultural Differences Emerge in Plastic Surgery
One of the most known procedures offered to Dominicans at a plastic surgery clinic in Upper Manhattan, is an operation to lift women’s buttocks, as the explained by the doctor, “they all like the curve.”
On the other hand, surgeons in Flushing, Queens, have their attention trained a few feet higher, on reversed noses that their Chinese patients want flipped down. At the same time, Russian women in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, are increasing their breasts size, while Koreans in Chinatown are having jaw lines slimmed.
As the demand for surgical improvement blast around the world, New York has built up a host of niche markets allowing the city’s many immigrants to get tucks and tweaks that are cautiously modified to their cultural liking and principles of beauty. Similar to discovering Lebanese grape leaves or bowls of Vietnamese pho that taste of home, immigrants can find surgeons able to reconstruct the cleavage of Thalía, the Mexican songster, or the dazzling eyes of Lee Hyori, the Korean pop star.
Also a rising number of doctors can be found offering layaway plans to help patients pay for operations. However, should the price be non- affordable still, there is always unlawful surgery by unlicensed practitioners which is available in many neighborhoods.
These specialized clinics also redesign Asian eyelids and Latina figure. Yet, they do more than that, they provide a pore-level viewpoint on the ambition and insecurities of immigrants in 21st-century New York — a mosaic portrait buffed with Botox.
President of Long Island Plastic Surgical Group (which has three clinics in the city), Dr. Kaveh Alizadeh said “When a patient visits us from a specific ethnic environment and of a certain age, we know what they’re going to be looking for.” “We more like amateur sociologists.”
An immigrant himself from Iran, Dr. Alizadeh admits that the outcome can seem less like science than like stereotyping. Nonetheless, he and other doctors who work in ethnic neighborhoods say they can scan their appointment books and spot distinctive trends. The trend shows that many Egyptians are having face lifts, numerous of Italians are restructuring their knees. As opposed to Iranians, who Dr. Alizadeh says do mostly nose jobs.
Yet, in immigrant neighborhoods, there is no questioning the increase in demand, where Mandarin and Arabic are spoken in the operating room and patients range in age “from eighteen to eighty,” as one doctor put it.
750,000 Asians in the United States underwent cosmetic procedures, from surgery to less invasive work like Botox injections. In 2009, an estimated five percent of the Asian population, and more than twofold the number in 2000, according to projections by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons did one of the stated procedure. Among Latinos, the number was about 1.4 million, nearly three percent of that population and a threefold increase from nine years earlier. In 2009, relatively four percent of whites had cosmetic work done.
In New York, new clinics are offering services in immigrant enclaves, and accessible practices have expanded to keep up with demand.
The extreme makeover is, in many ways, a tradition among the city’s immigrants. In the early days of cosmetic surgery, a hundred years ago, European Jews did nose jobs and Irish immigrants had their ears pinned back in order have a “closer resemblance to “ Americans,” said Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a professor of sociology at Queens College who is a author; on popular attitudes toward plastic surgery. “The bulk of those operations were focused on adjustment issues,” the professor said.
However, the motivations emerge as diverse and complicated as these procedures today. Rather than trying to fit in to their new country, many immigrants reshape themselves to their home culture’s trends and tastes.
“My patients are confident in their Hispanic looks,” said Spanish speaking Dr. Jeffrey S. Yager, who operates a clinic since 1997 Washington Heights, a largely Dominican neighborhood in Manhattan, and has tripled its size. “I don’t get the patients who want to obscure their ethnicity.”
While clinics advertise in the national Russian, Spanish and Chinese media, they have much in common with one another and with those serving non – immigrants. Everyone wants a flat stomach and a smooth forehead, yet their core businesses are as unlike as the languages spoken by their patients.
Dr. Holly J. Berns, an anesthesiologist, feels as if she is on a seesaw when she journeys from Dr. Yager’s office to suburban clinics. On Long Island, she said, “they’re doing all they can to remove the fat from their buttocks.” While, in Washington Heights, “they just want their rear ends enlarged and rounded.”
Twenty – seven year old Dominican patient of Dr. Yager’s, Italia Vigniero, had breast implants in 2008 and is contemplating a buttocks lift to gain, as she called it, “the figure of a woman.”
“We Latinas identify ourselves with our bodies,” she said. “We constantly have curves.”
“My character doesn’t go with small breasts,” she added. She uses the Spanish words “pecho” and “personalidad” which means “breast” and “personality” in English. From such she devised a term that could be used as Dr. Yager’s motto: “Now, I’m a person with a lot of ‘pechonalidad!’ ”
In Flushing, home to a vibrant Asian community with many new immigrants, Dr. Steve Lee, a native of Taiwan, performs some procedures that are hardly ever, if ever, done in Dr. Yager’s clinic. Dr. Lee stated that a number of Chinese, believe that prominent earlobes are favorable. Hence, he was not shocked when a male client asked him to inject cosmetic filler into his earlobes to make them longer.
Another plastic surgeon in Flushing who understood the desire, Dr. Jerry W. Chang, said “The bigger the earlobes, the wealthier you are.”
Other patients request that a reversed nose be turned “all the way down,” in keeping with a conventional belief that prominent nostrils allow fortune to spill out, Dr. Lee said.
Possibly the most desired procedure among Asians is “double-eyelid surgery,” which forms a crease in the eyelid making the eye look rounder. Some people disapprove of the operation, which is immensely accepted in several Asian countries, as a throwback to medical procedures destined to obscure ethnic features.
Margaret M. Chin, a lecturer of sociology at Hunter College who specializes in Asian immigrant culture cited that “appearing Westernize makes you included in the acceptable culture and ethnicity. “Yet I feel sad that they believe they have to do this.”
During discussions before surgery, Dr. Lee takes patients through a slide show of a Caucasian woman with an ordinary wrinkle in her eyelids and Asian women without it. He discusses the techniques involved; a stitch here, a cut there, which can bridge the anatomical differences. But he, like quite a few other Asian plastic surgeons, said the procedure had little to do with assimilation.
“One of the qualities of beauty is to have big eyes,” Dr. Lee said, “and to get that effect you have to have the twofold eyelids.”
For all the cultural differences, New York plastic surgeons recognize that ethnic neighborhoods are not islands. American pop culture, they say, has powerfully influenced immigrants and their offspring believe of how they should look. Furthermore, reality television shows like “Bridalplasty” have encouraged surgical solutions.
Dr. Elena Ocher, a Russian immigrant, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, credits the wave of young Russian women requesting breast implants to American culture. “The new generations of Russians are very American, and there’s something in America about large breasts,” she said. “What is the meaning of this addiction?”
Thirty year old Maya Bronfman, an accountant from Moldova, said several of her Russian friends had done procedures. Nonetheless, she brushed aside their ideas of American beauty standards. “Everybody in New York is some kind of an immigrant,” she said. “They’re just doing it to feel good.”
Dr. Ocher said that about ninety percent of her Russian patients request operations on the body. However, the vast mass of Arabs wants surgery on the face. “Arab people never entirely reveal any body parts,” she explained.
Iranian and Italian women sign up for a range of procedures, from the face to the feet, Dr. Ocher said. Yet, she has noticed that Italians care more about their knees.
She stated that, Italian girls sport miniskirts a lot,” hence “the knees should appear youthful.”
