About Me
- Lotus Reads
- Book fiend,culture-vulture, world traveller, daughter of the tropics now living in the Great White North.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Batting my eyelashes!
FINALLY, a cosmetic enhancement I might be tempted to try!!! OK, I'm kidding, but longer lashes is always a good thing, isn't it?
Culled from CNN/IBN:
"DO you think you've seen it all when it comes to cosmetic surgery? Look more closely.
Eyelash transplant surgery wants to become the new must-have procedure for women -- and the occasional man -- convinced that beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in front of the eye itself.
Using procedures pioneered by the hair loss industry for balding men, surgeons are using "plug and sew" techniques to give women long, sweeping lashes once achieved only by glued on extensions and thick lashings of mascara.
And just like human hair for that is the origin, these lashes just keep on growing.
"Longer, thicker lashes are a ubiquitous sign of beauty. Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure," said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants.
"This is a brand new procedure for the general public (and) it is going to explode," Bauman said during what was billed as the world's first live eyelash surgery workshop for about 40 surgeons from around the world.
Under the procedure, a small incision is made at the back of the scalp to remove 30 or 40 hair follicles that are carefully sewn one by one onto the patient's eyelids.
Only light sedation and local anesthetics are used and the cost is around $3,000 an eye.
The technique was first confined to patients who had suffered burns or congenital malformations of the eye.
However, word spread and about 80 per cent are now done for cosmetic reasons.
For many women, eyelash surgery is simply an extra item on the vast nip-tuck menu that has lost its old taboos.
More than 10 million cosmetic procedures from tummy tucks to botox were performed in the United States in 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
The figure represents a 38 per cent increase over the year 2000.
Twenty-seven year old Erica Lynn with long auburn hair, breast implants and a nose job, had eyelash transplants three years ago because she was fed up with wearing extensions on her sandy-colored lashes.
"When I found out about it, I just had to have it done. Everyone I mention it to wants it. I think eyelashes are awesome. You can never have enough of them," Lynn said.
Bauman, who practices in Florida, does about three or four a month. Dr Sara Wasserbauer, a Northern California hair restoration surgeon, says she has been inundated by requests.
"I have been getting a ton of eyelash inquiries. If I had $10 for every consultation, I'd be a rich woman,” she said.
The surgery is not for everyone. The transplanted eyelashes grow just like head hair and need to be trimmed regularly and sometimes curled. Very curly head hair makes for eyelashes with too much kink."
I do realise that "eyelash curling" might seem a frivolous topic to post about, but in doing so, I'm trying to get an opinion on cosmetic surgery in general...would you do it? Do you think it betters a person's chances of getting a good job, a great date? Does it improve one's self-confidence? Or is cosmetic surgery a dangerous obsession? What fuels it? Why, as a society, are we creating a standard of beauty that is artificial, that doesn't even exist in nature? Why?
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14 comments:
thanks for dropping by.... :)
Hello, Canary, thanks for the return visit! :)
i fully plan on getting a tummy tuck one day because i intensely dislike the curtain of hanging flesh that resulted from 2 pregnancies. it's only for me, i don't particularly care what anyone else thinks of my abdomen. my mom got a full-on face, neck and eye job last year. she's thrilled. i don't know her reasons for wanting it, but i do know she's not a particularly vain woman, nor does she have a social life that might demand youth. i think it just made her happy. everyone does it for different reasons, don't they?
hi, Melissa!
Thanks so much for your honest comments. I'm glad your mom's thrilled with the results of the procedures. It's wonderful to see women taking care of themselves in a responsible way. I'm sure there'll come a time when I will consider smoothing out the downward creases between my nose and mouth and, yes, those tummy tucks might be calling my name,too! ;)
I'm just concerned for young people who play with cosmetic surgery in the quest to have one of those perfectly symmetrical faces, with the perfect nose, jaw, teeth and eyes. I'm afraid of the length they'd be willing to go to banish all imperfections.
I'm also concerned for these new ideals of beauty that we as a society have embraced - subzero clothing sizes, Angelina Jolie lips, big breasts on skinny bodies, impossibly high cheekbones -I mean how many of us are genetically predisposed to having these features? So, women do the next best thing, they go under the knife to achieve the effect.
I want a tummy tuck and my sagging face fixed. I don't know if I would do the eyelast procedure though. :)
you have wonderful points here, lotus. i look at celebrities like ashlee (jessica's sister) simpson, who had a unique and beautiful look, then went and got surgery to look like everyone else. huh?
i love embracing uniqueness in people, whether it's faces, bodies, or personalities. when i had braces a few years back, my orthodontist shook his head and said, "if only there were something we could do about that severe overbite!" and i said, "overbites are beautiful," and gave him a big smile. there's a whoooole long backstory to why i think that, but the bottom line is, it's me.
the ready avalability of plastic surgery to all ages is unsettling, for many will make irreversible mistakes and regret them forever. hopefully giving our kids piles of love and acceptance will keep them from feeling inadequate, but that's idealistic thinking. and we can only hope that the unrealistic ideas of beauty these days will fade. again, idealistic.
Weclome to the club, beenzzz! ;)
Melissa, I'm like you in that, I find a person attractive when he or she has that one factor - be it a mole, a long nose, or even an overbite,lol - that sets him or her apart from the crowd. I don't like the clone mentality, it's really unattractive. And yet, here we are as a society striving to look like everyone else. It's baffling to me!
I read this too, and to answer your question, right now, I don't see myself getting any. I've been watching that show doctor90210 where they do cosmetic surgeries, and the ones on that show seem excessive to me... repeated eyebrow , breast, and cheek lifts on 20 somethings because they think it makes them look better. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong to get cosmetic surgeries obviously, but seeing people get petty surgeries done makes me wonder if, after an initial, perhaps necessary (medical?) surgery, they see the possibilities and become addicted to getting cosmetic surgeries all the time.
this eyelash thing seems unnecessary! eyelash extensions are available at cvs. less painful, less risky, fully reversible. this reminds me of when i studied about obsessive compulsive disorder, and some people who are "pluckers" pluck even their eyeLASHES. ouchh.
Hi, Sruthi!
I think you're absolutely right about cosmetic surgery becoming addictive. There is no other explanation for why people want so many repeat procedures. You get into the habit of looking in the mirror, not to appreciate what you see looking back at you, but in order to critique and explore what else you can do to change your looks - it's almost like playing God - you now have the power to rearrange your features to suit your mood.
About the eyelashes thingie - I read somewhere a long time ago that the one cosmetic product that most women in the west would never want to be without is their mascara wand. Judging by that, I would say long, thick and dark eyelashes appeals to them very highly. Asian women, especially those from the sub-continent on the other hand seem genetically blessed with long, dark lashes and I suppose that is why we don't find this particular procedure enticing! :)
Unbelievable! $6,000 for eyelashes. No wonder much of the world considers North Americans to be greedy and self-centered people.
I would encourage anyone who has $6,000 to spare to visit the Kiva.org website and find 240 families to lend money to. When their loans are repaid, then feel good about getting your eyelashes done!
Lotus, I've been writing about Kiva in my blog. I hope you and your readers will take a look.
The first article is here.
Sorry, I hope this doesn't sound like spam. Kiva is a charitable organization that provides microloans to needy people in 13 countries. I have no connection other than that I was so impressed that I wrote an article about it...and then more and more articles.
La Gringa, thanks for visiting, and it's wonderful that you're using your blog to promote such a wonderful and helpful organization. Please keep up the good work!
Lotus, I spotted your news-clipping of the article on the eyelash transplant procedure I performed in Los Angeles recently.
Lotus, I spotted your news-clipping of the eyelash transplant procedure I performed in Los Angeles recently. Certainly, this procedure is gaining a great deal of attention--mostly because it is new to the general public. However, eyelash transplants are actually not a 'new' hair transplant procedure. For years, this procedure has been available for both women and men who have sustained damage to their eyelids and eyelashes (from trauma, like car accidents & burns).
Eyelash transplantation is simply a natural extension of the kind of techniques surgeons use to pefrom undetectable hair transplants for men and women who suffer from scalp hair loss.
For some people who have suffered from trichotillomania (a hair-pulling disease) and have permanently damaged their lashes, eyelash transplantation has been used to 'make them whole' once again. I think more recently, since the 'word has gotten out' about the fact that eyelash transplantation can be used for purely cosmetic reasons, this has generated more discussions like you have here on your blog.
As a surgeon who performs these procedures routinely for years, I can say that eyelash transplants (like other types of cosmetic surgery) are not going to turn you into some movie star, but they do tend to enhance the beauty of the eyes and face. Enhancing one's eyes with makeup, mascara, 'face-paint' or whatever has been described in the earliest recorded history (Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, the Bible, Talmud, Queen Elizabeth, etc.) and mascara (used by 3 out of 4 American women) has been around for over 100 years.
Today, eyelash transplants are just a new way of providing that 'enhancement.'
For more information about eyelash transplantation procedures, or to look at some before & after photos of eyelash transplant patients, watch videos about the eyelash procedure, etc., visit http://www.eyelash-transplant.com. Keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
Dr. Alan Bauman
Medical Director
Bauman Medical Group
Hair Restoration for Men and Women
Boca Raton, Florida USA
http://www.baumanmedical.com
thanks for this !check out my blog: http://ohwowsorandom.blogspot.com/2009/07/beauty-diy-keep-your-eyelashes-thick.html
dont know if u tried this diy thing