The Cosmetic Surgery Blog

Walking through the grocery store, one is visually overwhelmed by images of the female body. Slender, sonsie female bodies, no less, bodies differentiated only by the colors of their gleaming coifs. Month after month, the parade goes on, and even if the identity of the bodies change (which you can only tell by looking at the captions), the bodies themselves seem consistent. A slightly different nose, a quirky smile, perhaps, but that is all the difference. Even women who are markedly different from the overwhelming trend are strapped, taped, dressed, shot, then airbrushed to match the ideal.

And for the magazines it is an ideal. It is their stock in trade, because magazines sell with promises of how to be as beautiful, as sexy, as slim and curvy, as the women on the cover. And the tactic works, because so many women's bodies are so far from that ideal. Whether a woman finds her hips are too big or her breasts are too small, she is likely to feel less attractive by comparison. It is partly as a result of the magazines that so many women have body-image problems.

But is this really beauty? Is the magazine ideal a barometer of what really makes a woman beautiful? It is one way for a woman to be beautiful, yes, but it isn't the only way. With the saturation and repetition of the magazine ideal, it's easy to forget that there are other ways for women to look that are also good. By looking at an array of artists who present different ideals, it is possible to see that we don't have to feel bad about our bodies because they don't match the magazine ideal of beauty.

From Gustav Klimt, who clothes his waif-like figures in concretized emotion, to Peter Paul Rubens, who disrobes the pure bodily pleasures of ample flesh, each of these artists takes a different tack on what is the essence of beauty, idealizing a different form of woman. Are these figures more realistic than the magazines? No, in fact, possibly less so, as, for example, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingre's Grand Odalisque has an extra vertebra in the elegance of her overlong back. But by looking at different ideals, we can hopefully break the stranglehold the modern mass-media has on beauty.

Even more important, looking at these artists, the one commonality that shines through is that beauty is not so much a result of bodily features such as breasts or buttocks, but of a more sublime combination of posture, poise, grace, and confidence.

The Waifs of Gustav Klimt

Jack Vettriano: The Sliver of Nostalgia

Eternal Youth and Virginal Desire

The Dangerous Sexuality of John Williams Waterhouse

Classical Norms

The Pinup and Modern Femininity

The Odalisque

The Baroque and the Beautiful

Labels: art, beauty

Although it is definitely true that narrow hips have a universal appeal, there is a brief period when Western culture became fascinated with really big women, not Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, voluptuous pin-up big, but really big women. The most famous artist of the period created the iconic vision of zaftig loveliness, and we nowadays describe women of this build with the adjective Rubenesque. Peter Paul Rubens is famous for his figures of great girth that also project loveliness and sensuousness. Although large by today's standards, Ruben's baroque visions are ones of pure corporeal joy, promising the viewer with indulgence pleasures of the flesh as they have so obviously and habitually indulged.

Before I begin my discussion, I think Michael Gill's words best convey the overall spirit of Rubens' work: "No one ever caught the rosy bloom of healthy skin, the shimmering quiver of well fed flesh with such lip-smacking skill. His women are displayed like great compotes of cream and exotic fruits from the Indies—kumquats and soursops and apricots, the flesh of melons and oranges from Seville." The secret to Rubens' painting is that the people, although heavy, look healthy and strong, and this is one of the strongest messages anyone should get from this blog, that being beautiful means, first and foremost being healthy, and that pursuing the latter will almost always yield the former.

That Rubens' figures are meant to be desirable is seen from the prominence of mythico-erotic themes, such as in this painting of Leda and the Swan, one of the many disturbing stories of Zeus' seduction of mortals and nymphs. As significant and commonplace as this story is, it is always a disconcerting subject to see portrayed. Rubens' painting is especially perverse, because it leaves very little to the imagination. Leda is pretty clearly astride the swan, which is also tenderly nibbling her lip. What recommends Rubens' nymph is the healthy glow of her skin, contrasted sharply against the dun of the swan and the rich red of the cloth behind her, but also the pale white of the sheet. Ample thighs and stomach contrast with relatively small breasts in this lusciously curvaceous figure.

Rubens' Venus is different from most we have seen. More corpulent than the classical norm, the primary erotic association of the figure is in her back and her face. The breasts are erased as an erotic focus. Unlike classical figures as well as the paintings of Waterhouse and Parrish, Rubens' Venus has a soft, round chin, although her nose is well-defined against the frame of the mirror and in the reflection. The reflection carries an invitation to the viewer to watch her in the knowing expression of her eyes and just the faintest glimmer of a smile threatening to appear on her red lips. The way the entire painting draws our eyes again and again to the reflection forces us to identify the goddess of love and beauty primarily with her face, reminding us that beauty is as much an attitude of the mind as an attribute of the body.

Labels: art, beauty, Rubens, skin care, voluptuous

The most famous odalisque is Le Grande Odalisque (1814) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Similar to the classical norm, there is less emphasis placed on the largeness of the breasts, which are present, rounded, but not given attention. Instead, emphasis is placed on the buttocks, which are quite large, and made to seem even larger by the way they are partly concealed by the placement of the arms. The stomach is shown with ripples and folds. Unlike classical sculptors, however, there is not the same emphasis on profile in the odalisque, here diminished by the ¾ face view, which causes the nose to be lost somewhat in the blending to shadow.

This Odalisque (1874) was painted by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, and is one of the most famous and traditional. Note how the painting takes emphasis off the primary features of the face, such as the nose, even to the extent of concealing the chin completely. Instead, the only major facial feature that receives attention is the ear, which is highlighted by the hair heaped atop the head. The woman's back is smooth, with no sign of the ribs, and in the lower back there are two dimples adding extra emphasis to the fat present in the woman's buttocks and thighs.

Although the most classic forms of the odalisque emphasize the shapeliness of body, the earlier The Blonde Odalisque (1752) by François Boucher emphasizes the corporeality of the sensual body. While Ingres and Lefebvre emphasize the body's curves against dark material and shadows, Boucher uses pale fabrics and the posture to somewhat erase the curves of the body, especially the breasts, but even the buttocks so that the thigh is the most prominent portion of the woman's anatomy.

Labels: art, beauty, body contouring, François Boucher, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, liposuction, odalisque

The pinup is a contested object in cultural circles both for its artistic form and its social content. The pinup may actually be the root of modern women's body image problems. Before the pinup, most representations of the feminine form were contained in either high art or pornography. In either case, these representations were removed from the experience of most women, either by allegorical distance as representations of a goddess or nymph, or by simply being a private object for men's consumption only. However, the pinup deviates from both these traditions, and moves into the real world, thrusting its idealized forms via magazines, posters, and prints into the everyday lives of women everywhere. Once injected into normal experience, these artificial, impossible forms with narrow waists, slender legs, and heart-shaped faces became objects of desire for men, emulation for women, and, unachievable by either, have contributed to considerable emotional strife on both sides.

Or so the story goes. And it is somewhat true.

But there is another truth, a truth that is important for both pin-ups as cultural icons and cosmetic surgery as social practice. Pinups are, in the words of scholar Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "an image type predicated on the relative isolation of its feminine motif through the reduction or outright elimination of narrative, literary, or mythological allusion [and a] decontextualization, reduction, or distillation of the image of femininity to a subject in and of itself," i.e. a representation of pure femininity. While this means that they do pose an impossible standard for flesh-and-blood women, who can never be so purely feminine, imbued with such voluptuous, seductive power, it also means that they are a "performative source of female power" (Maria Elena Buszek, 1998). In other words, as pinups moved from being passive objects of the male gaze (as in the Gil Elvgren painting "Ankles Aweigh" above left) into more active advocates of the war effort, such as the Alberto Vargas painting to the right, then in special issues of the magazines printed without advertisements and shipped to the front and as nose art on the bombers(below) that first carried the war to the enemy, they empowered women to take up a larger role in society. In a similar fashion, cosmetic surgery has the ability to empower women, to free them from the trap of one or two things they do not like about their bodies to allow their exterior to become a true expression of their interior selves.

Pinups have many of the features of the classical norm, although they often emphasize larger breasts, narrower waists, and have impossibly long legs. But what makes pinups enduring icons of femininity is not their body, but their spirit, a freedom from the mother-whore dichotomy of Victorian womanhood into the modern ideal of a woman who is able to be sexual without being simply a sexual object.

Labels: art, body image, pinup

The Greek and Romans gave us so many of our cultural foundations in terms of law, government, philosophy, literature, and architecture that it should not be surprising that they also established many of our norms in terms of our concepts of feminine beauty. It is easy to see the influence of classical statuary such as this Roman copy of a Greek original representation of Diana, found at Gabii in Italy. The original sculptor was Praxitilies, and the original sculpture was made in the 4^th century BCE, although this copy was not sculpted until the 1^st Century CE. The way her draperies conceal her form is very much like Parrish's use, however, she has, overall, a softer body. Note how the fleshiness we saw in the legs of Waterhouse's women is here also evident in Diana's arms, so, although this figure is largely concealed (appropriate for one of the three virgin goddesses of classical mythology), we have a sense that this figure has more fat than those in Waterhouse's paintings. Look at the face, too, and there is more evidence. Although this statue has a strong, straight nose, the chin and cheeks are very curved, perhaps even sagging slightly from the weight of fat in the neck.

A clearer idea of the classical ideals of feminine beauty might be gained from statuary focusing on a less chaste goddess: Aphrodite. In this case, the Aphrodite of Cnidus, another copy of Praxiteles. We should ignore the head and arms in this sculpture, since they are all restorations, but the torso and thighs give us plenty of information. The body is soft, with a relatively narrow waist, but wide hips. The figure has a slight paunch, and the thick thighs touch. The latter is a common source of anxiety among women, who have seen magazine of swimsuit models whose thighs are so slender that they do not touch when the woman stands.

If we consider the rear of a different copy of the Praxiteles statue, we can see that the derriere has a similar corpulence. Venus' butt is relatively large, round, and thick. There are folds at the top of the thighs, indicating again that this woman has fat, although she has no cellulite. The back also shows a significant amount of fat, as the ribs are completely concealed, and the shoulder blades are only vaguely hinted beneath the smoothness of the skin.

Then, if we consider the most famous classical statue of all, the Venus de Milo, which maintains most of the ideals of the other statues. A corpulent body, although in this case with some abdominal definition, the soft chin, and, as we have not mentioned, the small breasts. Small breasts were common in classical statuary, contributing to the charge that modern Western society has fetishized the breast as an erogenous object. Although it is true that modern Western society idealizes larger breasts than the classical period, it is not true that breasts are not considered erotic in other cultures. Evidence of this can be seen in the Song of Songs, and I will discuss it more when we turn to non-Western representations of beauty.

Labels: art, beauty, body image, breast augmentation, Classical Greek and Roman

The Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Waterhouse, are praised for the rich colors of their artwork and the loftiness of their themes, which represent characters from ancient mythology and high poetry. Although his paintings share many common features with Maxfield Parrish, Waterhouse's subjects are in no way asexual. They are figures of striking beauty, a beauty that is the form of deadly temptation.

The Siren, of course, is the most familiar form of feminine tempter. Her voice draws ships off course, forcing them to crash into the rocks, drowning their crews. Waterhouse's siren, lacking a voice, must show her temptation with her body. There are some clear similarities between Waterhouse and Parrish, especially in their emphasis on profile. Here, Waterhouse works harder to emphasize the shapely nose and strong chin by contrasting them with her russet-red hair. Waterhouse also emphasizes the line of her jaw, showing the importance of a taut skin and muscles of the neck. Although similar, the bodies of Waterhouse's figures are fleshier than those of Parrish. Consider the extended leg of the woman on the left in Contentment and the legs of the siren. See how much more fleshy depression we see in the siren's leg. Waterhouse also shows us the small rolls of fat under the siren's small breast and the feminine paunch of her stomach. This woman has a very realistic body, but one that is so beautiful the drowning sailor's eyes are wide with awe, completely absorbed by the sight of her.

In Waterhouse's more famous Hylas and the Nymphs, we see a very similar beauty replicated many times. The bright skin of the nymphs contrasts sharply against the dark water and vegetation and also the dun color of Hylas' weather-browned hide. Again notice the nose, chin, and neck of the central nymph. In this painting, it the women's eyes we see, and though their slender hands are on Hylas' arm and his indigo chiton, it is their eyes that pull him--and us--in.

In Lamia, Waterhouse shows this Libyan queen before her transformation into the devouring half-serpent. In her case, her beauty is her own doom. The only hint we have of her future fate is the python-patterned shawl in her lap. Interestingly, Waterhouse foreshadows the dangerous nature of her beauty by showing that she herself is entranced by it as she stares at her reflection in the still pool.

Labels: art, beauty, body image, John Waterhouse, mythology

A common misconception, and one perpetuated by many industries, is that "beautiful" and "sexy" are synonyms. An even more common confusion is between the "sensual" and the "sexual." When considering cosmetic surgery procedures, however, it is important to make the distinction between these terms. If you want to look beautiful, you don't necessarily want to look sexy. And if you want to look sensual, it doesn't necessarily mean emphasizing your sexuality.

Maxfield Parrish is an ideal artist for making the distinction between the two concepts. His figures are beautiful without being sexy, sensual without being sexual. Although Vettriano's paintings often portray a narrative with sex as its obvious end and goal, filled with figures characterized by lust, Parrish's figures are free of lust, although they are not free of desire. The figure in Ecstasy, for example, is full of passion as she holds back her hair in the wind and raises her young face to the sky. Although Parrish is sometimes referred to as a neo-classical painter or illustrator, this is based on his use of classical (really Romantic) backdrops for his figures. The proportions of his figures are more slender than the classical norm, with thinner arms, legs, and torsos consistent with his themes of timeless youth.

More than sexual desire, his paintings with multiple figures usually evoke feelings of friendship, and the desire is not for fiery consumption, but for airy continuation. In Contentment, for example, these young friends are where they wish to be. The rosy complexion of their smooth, youthful skin reflects the soft light of morning, and their figures are positioned languidly in poses they might maintain for hours.

In The Lute Players, you can see the eagerness with which the women attend to one another's conversation as they pause from play. Note the well-proportioned profile of the woman on her stomach, the well-shaped nose, feminine but not weak. Or the definition of the chin of the woman on the left. Their faces have much more curvature than their bodies. The casual bunching of their garments conceals their figures, obviating the need for intense body contouring or liposuction, although these figures are unlikely to need it, of course.

Maxfield Parrish gives us a world without sex, but one that is as laden with desire and with sensuality as any ever painted.

Labels: anti-aging, art, beauty, satisfaction

Jack Vettriano is a contemporary painter whose popularity continues to grow. As it should be expected to, since his paintings are about, well, according to him, "sad, unhappy people who are driven by lust," which tends to be a popular subject among boringly happy people. A self-taught Scottish artist, Vettriano's paintings capture a world that never was and never shall be, always at its best moments. Consider Along Came a Spider, which captures a noir-ish scene at the moment of highest excitement in a relationship: just before the couple meets. The woman lounges on the couch in a black cocktail dress and long black gloves. She is slender, her legs long and thin, her collarbone clearly visible in light and shadow, the joint of her right shoulder clearly visible. Whereas Klimt's figures project emotion, Vettriano's figures absorb it, like black holes, repressing feeling to be replaced with incipient passion.

Vettriano's figures are just snapshots in a cycle of unhappiness, but they are shown at their best moments, the moments that make it all seem worthwhile. He shows us figures dressed up (or just undressed) at their best, or in moments of romantic beauty, as in Beautiful Dreamer, which should remind us that beauty is not an all-the-time thing. It is like a sacred river meandering through field and forest, sometimes glittering in sunlight, sometimes hidden. "Late nights and bad mornings," as Vettriano describes them, are the consequences of this life, but he rarely shows them. It is important, though, for us to remember that they lurk unseen.

The consequences of this kind of life are darkened eyes and furrowed brows; wrinkles, sunken cheeks, tight lips. Women in this category of beauty often need touch-ups between these moments, especially with injectable treatments. Botox cosmetic can counter the creased brow from morning-after anger. Autologous fat injections can fill cheeks and the hollows around the eyes. Restylane can be used in lip augmentation to keep the lips from growing too narrow and masculine.

Labels: art, beauty, body image, injectable fillers

The secret to Klimt's enduring popularity is his ability to take the internal life of his figures and project it into an external image. Klimt works with bright colors and abstract shapes to create a visual image of the emotional state felt by the people he represents. His most popular image is also his most extreme in this regard. In The Kiss, Klimt reduces his human figures to their absolute minimum, in terms of realistic representation. We see their hands, their faces, a shoulder, some feet, mostly focusing on the areas of intense awareness during the moment of kissing.

When Klimt does portray a more complete human figure, as in this detail from Sea Serpents, it is most likely a waify, almost emaciated woman, the sort of person we might mistake for the anorexic actress, and it shows how women with a bad body image can imagine they are overweight even when they are deathly thin. In a body of this size, any amount of fat can look out of proportion, such as the woman's thigh. But Klimt shows us this woman is comfortable, so secure that the strength of her eyes challenges us to enter the roiling sea of her emotion.

Although women of this body type are among the most common candidates for breast augmentation, Klimt shows us in this Portrait of Emile Floge that proportion can be easily maintained with the proper clothing, clothes that give volume and femininity to a slender frame.

Labels: art, beauty, body image, breast augmentation, klimt

I would like to focus on a growing problem in the United States: the negative body image many women maintain of themselves. Many women who are very attractive, who are loved by husbands, boyfriends, fathers, mothers, and children, cannot love themselves because when they look at their body, they cannot see themselves as others see them. Instead, they focus only on the things they feel bad about, such as large thighs or small breasts.

The conventional wisdom is that this is a result of modern media, which confronts women on a daily basis with images of beautiful models and screen sirens to which they cannot hope to compare. I do not believe that media is the cause, but I do believe that it contributes because of its insistence on a particular standard of beauty. It tells women that there is one and only one way to be beautiful. Often, the standard rotates around one or more "fad girls," as the entire media engine works as a single creature to promote the new movie by Jessica Alba or Halle Berry, and plasters her image on everything everywhere, saying this is beautiful.

The cosmetic surgery industry is often criticized for feeding into the general desire for perfect bodies that women feel, then utilizing it for its own profit by encouraging women to undergo unnecessary risks from optional surgeries. This is a charge that pricks my conscience, but I do not believe that it is entirely true. Cosmetic surgeons don't want patients with bad body images, because these patients will never be satisfied with the work they receive. Cosmetic surgeons want patients to come in with a good body image who may have one or more problem areas that they would like to address.

To help foster positive body images in women, I have planned a series of blogs on artists who use their vision to see and represent the beauty in women of all sizes. I will start tomorrow with Gustav Klimt.

Labels: art, beauty, body image, celebrity

A recently-reported excavation of a highly advanced Neolithic settlement shows that early humans were as concerned about appearance as long as 7500 years ago, since they produced statuettes of women wearing short skirts, ornamental tops, and bracelets around their arms. In the settlement, archaeologists found many things, including tools for metalworking. A nearby copper mine dated to the same period as the settlement confirms that the people in this village were advanced metalworkers.

The settlement also shows that villagers produced as many as 60 different forms of pottery and figurines. The village has evidence of advanced burial practices, clothes made of wool, flax, and leather. It also shows that the people of this era treated children much as we would today, supplying them with rattles and toy animals, as well as having them play at adult tasks such as pot-making.

There is also a thermal well nearby, marking what may very well be Europe's oldest beauty spa.

Interestingly, the settlement also has figurines of young women, who ornamented themselves in a fashion remarkably similar to today's women. Although it is by no means One Million Years B.C, the women wore short skirts and attractive short blouses.

The figurine also shows how much this culture valued narrow waists and arms of young women, meaning that in some ways they were very similar to us with our liposuction-seeking culture, not only around the abdomen, but perhaps even seeking SmartLipo for the arms and other targeted areas of fat. However, since the women are small-breasted, we imagine they would most likely not share the penchant of modern humans toward breast augmentation

Labels: art, breast augmentation, fashion, liposuction, neolithic

Alberto Vargas is one of the most well-known and well-respected pin-up artists. His art endures today, and has been the subject of several major exhibitions, including one at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

Although he painted prodigiously for almost 60 years, his most influential work was done during the 1940s for work published in Esquire Magazine. These works, known as "Varga Girls," a name adapted to make it sound even more exotic than the Peruvian-born artist's actual name, became favorites among GIs during World War II.

Vargas' work replaced that of artist George Petty, whose "Petty Girl" had previously become a feature of the magazine. Although similar in poses and basic design principles, Varga Girls represented significant improvements artistically over the Petty Girl. The Petty Girl is naturally well-proportioned, with a tucked tummy, accentuated by a slightly bent posture, with long legs made to seem longer by the use of Pointe shoes. The girls are brightly lit from many angles, minimizing shadow, and they are generally smiling.

In contrast, the Varga Girls have much more depth, both physically and in their implied character. Unlike Petty's paintings, which show women in largely planar poses, Vargas' paintings show women whose bodies move forward and backward as well as side-to-side in the field of the image. Vargas' paintings are full of shadow, allowing his women to conceal as much as they reveal, and their expressions are often more complex, from happy and playful to mischievous or even brooding. Unlike the Petty Girl, some of Vargas' women are shown with actual folds in their stomach as they bend, giving them realism that augments, not diminishes, their beauty. Vargas treats his women with respect, allowing their individual characters to show through, a significant difference between the Varga Girls, who are allowed to be separate individuals, and the Petty Girl, who essentially embodies the idea that all women are equivalent.

If you are looking to have cosmetic surgery done, contact the Cosmetic Surgery Directory to find a skilled plastic surgeon in your area. We can help you find one whose body contouring artistry is most like that of Alberto Vargas and will let your character show, rather than one like Petty, who simply wants to make you into a flat image of idealized femininity. And certainly, you do not want to use a cartoonist like Jack Cole, whose women are breast-augmented caricatures, shallow, materialistic, and vain.

All images in this post are courtesy of the Pin-Up files, where you will find representative work from these and many other artists on display and for sale.

Labels: art, beauty, breast augmentation, cosmetic surgery