The Cosmetic Surgery Blog

The Song of Solomon is an extended erotic poem, purportedly written by King Solomon about a passionate relationship between a pair of young lovers. Although Biblical authorships are generally apocryphal and impossible to trace, based on his reputation, he certainly could have written it. According to 1 Kings, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, which means he probably had a good idea what might constitute a beautiful woman.

The Song of Solomon describes a beautiful woman: "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from washing; whereof every one bears twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armory whereon hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies."

While this is all metaphorical and ancient in its context, the meaning of much of it is clear. To be beautiful, a woman should have white, even teeth. She should have red lips and speak well.

Her breasts should be like roe, which are deer that don't sag, but bound energetically up the mountainside. This is the goal of breast lifts, which can give sagging breasts the energy of hinds. Also, the breasts should be symmetrical. If your breasts are noticeably asymmetrical, breast augmentation can correct the asymmetry.

Most interesting is the passage describing the neck, which likens it to a tower, with strong, straight, smooth sides. I find the description of the neck hanging with "a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men" to be very compelling. First, it alludes to jewelry, but it also implies that a woman's neck is one of those places that really has the power to win a man's heart. I once had a girlfriend who talked about this, saying that the hollow at the base of a woman's neck was the most beautiful part of her body. I don't know that I would go that far, but I do know two things.

First, a woman's neck is very noticeable, perhaps as a side effect of attention paid to her face and hair. Second, it is also one of the first places where we all, men and women, show our age or our weight. Our neck can easily begin to sag as our skin loses its elasticity, and fat readily collects there, giving us unsightly double chins. Fortunately, remedies exist. If your skin is sagging, a neck lift can be a very effective procedure, and new liposuction techniques allow the procedure to be practiced on every part of the body, even the very visible ones such as the neck, chin, and cheeks.

Now if I can only figure out what it means for the temples to be like a piece of pomegranate.

For many years now, laser skin resurfacing has been an effective alternative to chemical peels and microdermabrasion. Innovations have centered mostly on using newer lasers with more skin-friendly properties. We have gone from CO2 lasers to Erbium lasers. Compared to CO2 lasers, Erbium lasers are easier on the skin, meaning that treated individuals have less pain and a shorter recovery time.

However, the newest innovation in laser skin treatments is not a new laser, but a new way of handling the laser. Fraxel laser treatment provides even more rejuvenating results with less pain and down-time.

Fraxel (a trademark name derived from Fractional Laser treatment) is innovative because, unlike other laser treatments, it doesn't treat all of your skin at once. Traditional ablative laser skin resurfacing takes advantage of one aspect of lasers, their power, to completely vaporize the entire surface of your skin, leaving a younger layer of skin exposed, a layer that has been stimulated to produce collagen, filling in tiny wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. This is essentially equivalent to a REALLY bad sunburn, and it's painful and takes time to heal.

Fraxel, on the other hand, takes advantage of another property of lasers: their precision. Fraxel doesn't treat all your skin at once. Instead, it treats microscopic columns of your skin at a time, burning deep into the skin in just those areas, but leaving most of your skin intact. This works very well for stimulating collagen production, leading to the same or greater wrinkle reduction, but because the entire skin is not burned away it requires only a fraction of the healing time.

Fraxel shows excellent results not only on wrinkles and dry skin, but also on acne scars and skin discoloration, including age and liver spots. If you are interested in learning more about Fraxel treatment and finding a Fraxel doctor in your area, contact the Cosmetic Surgery Directory today.

The human buttocks are a nexus of sexual attraction for men and women. Popular music, television, and movies all promote the buttocks as making both men and women attractive. In fact, this is so true that it has inspired the popular metonymy "piece of ass," referring to an attractive person, but why should this be true?

The human buttocks are a strange confluence of biological adaptation and coincidence. Adaptively, the human buttocks are a combination of muscle and fat dedicated to the primary human adaptation: walking. Early humans literally walked their way around the globe, so it is not surprising that we might judge the fitness of a potential mate based on their walking "equipment": calves, thighs, and, of course, buttocks.

Coincidentally, females of our nearest primate relatives, the chimpanzees, signal that they are going through heat with a swelling of the buttocks, so it seems likely that as human beings adapted to an upright stance, the increased muscle mass was read as a signal that a woman was sexually ready, driving the human transition from periods of "heat" to essentially continual reproductive receptiveness.

Because large asses are considered signs of sexual attractiveness, it is not at all surprising that buttock lifts would be less practiced than tummy tucks on the order of 1:50, while buttock augmentation would be a growing treatment for women and men.