Art Meets
Scientific Precision.

Plastic surgery has never experienced such a boom as that observed in the last century. As old as the Egyptian papyri that treated scars, as mythical through the ingenuity of certain pioneers like Susruta, 800 BC, who made amputated noses reappear by flipping forehead skin for women mutilated for their adulteries, beauty surgery has rhymed for centuries with repair in order to socialize certain malformations, to erase the stigmas of certain diseases like syphilis and the horrors of war on broken faces.

In this humble task, aesthetics was inseparable from repair and reconstruction, which led Vilain to say that for the hand 'aesthetics is already function'. Very quickly, and with the development of anesthesia and the rise of asepsis, even the surgeons most skeptical of aesthetics for the cause of beauty began to gain confidence and to perform increasingly effective and less invasive gestures. The media boom is unprecedented, with Hollywood and its stars at the head of the list, but also and increasingly television, models, and the world of show business which largely determine the ideal of beauty which tends to become uniform by undergoing, it too, globalization!

But what then is Beauty? Gibran Khalil Gibran said that 'beauty is eternity observing itself in a mirror', so should it be understood that for us mortals, youth is the key to beauty? Is it the same beauty that we admire in nature and that we demand in art? And in this case can we demand it in nature if there is a way? And if the latter exists, should it be abused to reach perfection?

If we think carefully, the plastic surgeon arms himself with his scalpel like an artist who takes his brush to satisfy a demand in the search for beauty and like the painter or sculptor he is judged on his aesthetic results but if beauty is only the hazardous blossoming of an artistic essay, it is necessarily the premeditated accomplishment of a just act of plastic surgery. This is all the difference, the complexity and the beauty of our specialty where philosophical vision and artistic sensitivity come to collide with anatomical reality, a scientific process and an ethical obligation.

The just act is therefore the fruit of a justified indication and the accuracy of a surgical technique. The presence of these two factors in a climate of trust between patient and surgeon is therefore essential for the success of the medico-surgical operation. Even if media popularization promises easy access to beauty and therefore the factitious assurance of rapid social ascent and eternal youth, one must know how to judge the necessity of any act. Indeed, to the question 'Do we please because we are beautiful or are we beautiful because we please?' the answer seems obvious to me. Beauty does not necessarily induce the beautiful!

It is charisma, character, drive, presence, self-confidence and intelligence that embellish us every day, so we must know how to avoid the 'dysmorphophobes' thirsty for the scalpel lacking in self-confidence! But if the surgical act is to be reflected upon, desired and necessary for social blossoming and psychic balance, in this case its success will also depend on the technicality of a surgeon who must be warned, certified and recognized by his peers within a renowned institution and a learned society in order to be able to guarantee the maximum chances for the success of the pre-established contract.

So if as Stendhal said 'beauty is a promise of happiness' the plastic surgeon can only congratulate himself on being simply its humble servant.

Like a painter armed with his brush to galvanize his muse’s portrait; like a sculptor armed with his chisel to carve a bust from a stone, the plastic surgeon takes his sword-shaped lancet everyday to fight ugliness for beauty and we all know that if beauty can be a lucky hazardous blossoming of art it must be a successful fulfilment of a premeditated plastic surgery procedure. But…can we really reach beauty? and… what is beauty? Is it a concept? An achievement? A mathematical equation or just a human obsession? Is there « a beauty » or « the beauty »?

From Iran, where the perfect nose is considered the luckiest of God’s blessing, to parts of West Africa, where fat is fabulous, one country’s beauty can be another’s ugliness. Americans may obsess over the skinny, plastic ideal, but they are absolutely not the norm! Perhaps there is a lot of beauty trends and rituals from around the world but is there a common piece between all theses trends?

Knocking on math’s door, I was asking for an exact equation that could solve the mystery of beauty. My answer came especially from Italy when I discovered Vitrivius work valued by Leonardo Da vinci’s drawing. It’s a matter of ratio and it sounds like the cornerstone of attraction! Fibonacci, another Italian genius who learned his mathematical bases between Tunisia and Algeria brought to Pisa the Arab numbers and invented his own ones in a fabulous integer sequence leading to phi: « the golden ratio » (Φ = 1.618 033 988 7…). Famous artists and architects used this ratio to map out their masterpieces. From the Greek temples to Michelangelo’s David, the beauty transcendence is a right harmony of Φ suites even in nature; every single beautiful thing is made by a Φ dovetailing elements, even us!! « Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life » (1).

We look more healthy and more attractive if we are proportionally Φ made. That’s it! I was trying to find a rational response and it brought to me by an irrational number with no equivalent fraction and its decimal keeps going and never stops. Does this means that beauty is balanced on the edge of eternity? May be the Lebanese Gibran Khalil Gibran was right when he said « Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror » (2) and may be it’s the answer of the tireless motivation of our patients to stay young, which is not unpleasant for our business.

Anyway, I think it’s also a matter of Fashion! If we observe the Austrian Willendorf venus 24000 BC we can guess another type of « fatty »beauty totally different from nowadays. May be the mentalities are not the same and change from a centaury to another and from a decade to another! Remember, when The famous actress Fanny Brice did a rhinoplasty 5 years after the end of the first world war, all the united states newspapers screamed shame! « how she could change a hallmark of her religion like her Jewish nose? » but 40 years later when Barbara Streisand appeared in « Funny girl » with her Jewish nose, all the critics said: « but why didn’t she get a rhinoplasty?? »

We are supposed to extract, re invent beauty and this requires the right decision, the right procedure and the right patient in the right conditions. These are the safety guidelines for all of the board certified plastic surgeons and this is how it has to be, always. Hollywood, TV shows, Magazines set the tone during all the last centaury and gave us the ground rules to follow and they get back generously some frightful excesses on the screen but this snowball effect engulfed all the globe and generated a youth and obsessed celebrity culture thirsty with new procedures. Botulinum toxin, hyaluronic acid injections and other cost-effective drugs are obviously kindly pleasant for our holidays planning and in the name of beautification we do not absolutely feel guilty dealers but we have to confess that we invented the « no age » generation! Too much, too often and in too many places and it doesn’t matter if it looks fake, frozen without any expression the most important thing is to continue smiling hypocritically and to say: it’s beautiful!!

I think it’s time for plastic surgeons to give their rules and their beauty criteria they have inherited from their knowledge and experiences and spread tastefully these standards from Hollywood to Bollywood and from Cosmo to Vogue in order to protect what is the most important for us: Beauty.