- Now I'm just picking at myself.
Now I'm just like, "Everything's broken."
(grumbling)
(upbeat music)
So we're going to three different plastic surgeons
and we're going to see what they would say
about how to change my face into a model standard.
I don't feel like personally I would ever go to
a plastic surgeon.
But I am curious to see what they would say
about my face.
And I am curious to see what I would feel about it.
I expect to be told that they're just gonna do
like a total tear down.
I think that we live in the golden age of body positivity,
but I do think that that doesn't extend to faces.
Often when I'm reading comments online I'll see
negative comments about my face that I didn't
even think of before.
People say I look like a thumb.
The female version of Drew Carey.
Honestly we live in the golden age
of insults more than anything.
We've been talking about what we think the surgeons
will say, and we think that they're either going to
give three completely different descriptions
of what they would do to my face,
or they're going to all say the same thing
and that I'm gonna have just the same, generic,
Sears catalog face.
(upbeat electronic pop music)
Going to surgeon one, I'm feeling really nervous.
What if my face is like an old house that
we have to flip in order to return on investment?
- My name is Dr. David Amron, I'm a dermatologic surgeon
and the founder and medical director of the
Roxbury Institute in Beverly Hills, California.
- So what is a typical consultation like?
- The usual way of going about it
as a doctor is just to ask,
"So what are you here for?
"What do you wanna do?"
I really don't do it that way.
I very quickly turn it around and take control.
When I look at somebody's face, I categorize
it into all these areas and I kind of quickly come up
with my own idea of a treatment plan.
- At first I thought it was weird that the doctor
would just tell me exactly what he wanted to do to my face.
Like, it's my face, not your face.
But it makes sense, like, he's a professional.
He's seen lots and lots of faces.
- So if I came to you,
me personally, if I came to you and I said,
"What would you do to my face in order to bring
"it to like an optimal model standard?"
What would you do to my face?
- Right now, you want me to go into it?
- Yeah.
- [David] You ready to go?
- Yeah, let's go.
- Good, let's do it.
(upbeat, bumbling music)
Let's take a look.
- So this obviously just a thought experiment
and not a thing that's actually gonna happen to my face.
- Area number one are the expression lines.
Botox here, that's it.
Not here, not here.
You're starting to get a little bit of settling
of the eyebrow area.
- It's weird because we're looking at my face in the mirror
while he's describing the things happening
to my face, and it's like oh yeah,
I guess that is a thing that I never thought
about that you can see because you're a professional.
Ugh, I wonder if other people notice it.
- Firstly, I'm recommending liposuction
in the neck area.
It's not only gonna remove fat, but it's gonna lift
and tighten that up.
Would I jump into doing an upper eyelid removal of the skin,
called a blepharoplasty?
I really would at this point.
- I was thinking at the beginning of the consult
that he would just recommend like a total tear down,
so I was pleasantly surprised that he's recommending
just very subtle changes.
- We're going to the third area, okay?
Contour.
You know, everybody has a little bit
of asymmetry.
The right side of your face is a little bit higher
than the left side.
The left side's a little bit wider and drops
a little bit, that's why this is a little
bit fuller here.
- Oh.
I never noticed it, but yeah.
- Do you see that?
I would very subtly contour this cheek area over here,
a touch of restylane here and here.
I'd like to see a little more roundness to your lips.
Last area is skin.
The skin itself has very little age change to it.
- Okay, I'll take that.
We're in the first consultation for a long time.
Like, a long time.
- Your chin is pinker.
You've got rosacea.
And rosacea's adult acne, so we gotta treat the rosacea.
That's a whole long discussion in terms
of topical things, possibly oral things.
- So you wouldn't do anything to my nose?
- I'd like to see more length on your nose.
I'd like to see your nose a little bit narrower.
- So, it would be longer like this is what you mean?
- Yeah, yeah.
- I think that's, yeah, I think that's it.
I think this is everything. - Alright, great.
(upbeat pop music)
- That was interesting.
I thought that he was super professional.
It seemed like he was kind of like,
"Let's work with the face you have
"and not with the face you clipped out of a magazine."
Which is good 'cause like, this is the face I have.
I grew it myself.
I definitely feel not as good about myself as I did before.
Obviously this is what I asked for.
But it's still hard.
So now we're going to go see Dr. Li
and we're going to see what she says about
turning my face into that of a model's.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Dr. Linda Li, I'm a board certified plastic surgeon
practicing here in Beverly Hills.
So a consultation with me is typically me asking you
first and foremost, what bothers you,
because it's not about me, it's not about anybody else
in this room, it's about you.
- So the second surgeon's a little bit more like
ordering at a restaurant and then getting
what you ordered, whereas the first surgeon
was a little bit more like, "Here is a lasagna."
Just as an experiment, if you were to
shape my face into a fashion model standard,
what would you do to my face?
- So we probably couldn't completely do that,
but we could give you some aspects.
What I always like to say is the classic beauty
in an upside-down egg.
So a little fuller on top, and rounding down
to the narrow point in the center.
- Alright, let's step into the office.
(upbeat music)
- Starting down from below, all the high end models
have incredible, sharp jawlines,
so we would talk about a little bit of liposuction
right through here.
We would get rid of this right here.
You have a jawline now. - Okay.
- [Linda] When it comes to your nose, what we wanna do
is decrease the flare of it, so we actually
wanna kinda bring it in, a little bit of botox
right through here.
More cheeks up through here.
Take out the smile lines and also give you a little
bit of volume up here.
- Wow, now that I see my face this way,
I don't know if I can unsee it.
- [Linda] You could just take some duct tape.
- Well yeah.
- [Linda] Wrap it around the back of your head.
- She's very quick, she's very to the point.
She's very about the upside down egg.
- Your eyes are fantastic in terms of the shape
of your brows, but we also like to see them just
a little bit deeper, so if we could just get rid of
just a little bit up here in your upper eyelid.
- You mean take out some of the skin here?
- Take out a little of the extra skin.
You have beautiful lips, but I can see that
you're compensating with your lipstick and your liner.
What we can do is with filler, we can actually give
you more lip.
This is very popular thing right now.
Everybody wants the side lip.
- So she says all the things that she wants
to have happen to my face really fast.
It's like, cheeks, lips, fillers.
And it seems like it's not a lot, but it is.
So do people come to you with like certain pictures
of celebrities being like, "I want this person's face."
- Patients don't come in with celebrity's faces,
but they do come in with faces of people from Instagram,
from social media networks they have just found
that they happen to like.
I explain to them that none of these pictures are real.
These pictures are all Photoshopped.
- So they just wanna be Photoshopped?
People just want you to get in there with the blend tool,
and just make them a new face.
- If I could do that, I would be so wealthy, but I can't.
- [Kristin] Thank you so much.
- Absolutely, thank you for coming in.
(upbeat music)
- Both the consults I've done so far have been very
friendly, very professional, very good,
and I was like, "Yep, good."
I felt good in them and it was like good energy.
Everyone's positive, good thing, and then I would leave
and be like, "Well that's five things that I can't fix."
I mean I will say that they did both say
that they would never actually just give a run down
of all the patients' flaws, so I did ask for that.
That is what we are getting.
I'm very mad at the patriarchy right now.
It makes me really sad that that's where
our money has to go.
It has to literally go where our mouths are.
'Cause that's another thing they have to fix,
is make my lips bigger.
It did seem like the things that would be done
to my face were very small potatoes for them.
It seemed bigger to me, I think, because
this is stuff I've never experienced,
but to them it was like going to the grocery store.
You want some fillers?
You want some botox?
You want a different nose?
Just throw it in the card, we'll get it.
(rock music)
So we're on our way to see the last surgeon.
I think I know what they're gonna say to me,
but I'm really hoping that the third doctor
doesn't add any new insecurities to the Easter basket
of insecurities I already have.
(rock music)
- My name's Harrison Lee.
I'm a oral maxillofacial surgeon, ENT,
and facial plastic surgeon.
My approach is usually I ask the patient
what they're seeking first and then give them my opinion.
- So are we ready to start the examination?
- Let's do it.
- Okay, let's do it.
(upbeat music)
So obviously this is a thought experiment.
Like, we're not actually going to do this.
- Okay.
So, lets' go from the top, down.
Length here of the forehead here is pretty good
but the brow is a little bit prominent,
so I would like to retract the bone here a little bit.
- And that means shave the done down?
- [Harrison] Right.
- Okay.
- Shave the bone down.
Sometimes what I do is I actually
put cement in here, bone cement,
to make it rounder from the side.
- Okay.
- It makes it very attractive. (laughing)
We need to reduce the girth here.
Reduce the jaw angles and possibly do what is called
a genioplasty.
The chin's a little bit prominent, and a little bit long.
So what we need to do is actually bring it up
and back a little bit.
- So then you just shave all that off.
- [Harrison] Right, and then I take out a
middle segment of the chin.
- There's a lot of bone restructuring.
I've very surprised by that.
- And then what we need to do, then,
is a little bit of a lift.
Did you wanna do anything with the nose?
- Yeah, I mean do everything that you would say.
- [Harrison] I would maybe define the tip a little bit.
This needs to come in.
- Like that?
Okay.
- Maybe open up the upper eye a little bit, okay?
Take out a little bit of fat.
Lower eyes look great. - Okay.
I keep waiting for him to be like,
"Oh also, you need to fill in all your lines."
And he never says it which makes me hope
that maybe he didn't see them.
- Total operating time will be about six hours.
- Wow.
That's a long time.
- But it'll be a transformation.
(upbeat music)
- One funny thing about the last surgeon
said nothing about my mouth.
The first surgeon to say nothing about my mouth.
And he thought my cheeks were great.
Yeah, see, the compliments will stick with me.
You know, this is my third time, so I'm like
getting a little used to it, but,
every time is hard, man.
Being in a plastic surgeon's office
and having them tell you all the things
about your face that you've lived with for
your entire life that really need to be fixed
in order for society to view you as beautiful enough
to be a model, is a lot.
It's a lot emotionally to do at once.
And I did it three times.
(upbeat music)
- So we got the photos back from the Photoshop artist today.
I'm gonna go show Kristin.
Hi.
- What up.
- [Caitlin] This is for you.
- Oh, oh, it's for me.
It's a present.
- It's the photos.
- Okay, alright. - Are you ready?
- Yeah, I'm ready, let's look at these.
- Cool.
- Yeah.
Alright, here we go, here's number one.
Oh.
This actually doesn't look like, this is not too far
from me.
It's like, I look like myself seven years ago,
but not quite, it's really strange.
This is actually like, pretty natural.
I'm actually really surprised that this is what
the surgeon thought would be close to model standard,
because it's not that far from my face.
It basically just is my face, minus about 15% of the skin.
You ready for surgery two?
Okay, this is one is much different from how I look now.
It is,
woo, I'm like Malibu Barbie.
This looks like if someone played me in a movie.
This is how hot they would be.
Now that I'm looking at it in comparison
to like my original face, like wow.
That is not even the same person.
This is kind of more what I was thinking
in terms of, like, a model standard.
Surgeon one's photo and surgeon two's photo did
not look a like at all.
Will surgeon three's photo look like either of theirs?
Let's find out.
Alright, I'm opening it.
Nope.
It does not.
Surgeon three's photo might be the furthest away from me,
I think.
My chin is gone, but my neck is very long.
My chin is a recurring guest star in my face
with a lot of prominence, so to see my face
without a chin is very strange.
It would be like if they fired half the cast
on The Office.
I thought it would be different,
but I didn't think it would be this different.
I didn't think it would be like,
completely different visions.
You ready, Fred? - I'm ready.
- Okay, alright. - Let's do this.
- Here we go.
- Oh my god.
- It's too early for this.
Hold on a second, my mind is not.
- Yeah, I see the biggest change just in like, neck,
and chin.
- [Kristin] Each one suggested different lips.
- The middle one is very Kylie, to me.
- It definitely kind of like goes to show like,
"Okay, there isn't one like standard of beauty,
"so why are we stacking people up against this thing
"that is not real?"
- What one doctor would do is probably completely
different from what another doctor would do.
- If I were a surgeon, people would wake up
and I would've just been like,
"I gave you 10 more teeth." (laughing)
- So if three professional surgeons can't
agree on a standard of beauty,
who's to say that any of them are right?
Or that any of them are wrong?
I think my big takeaway is that, yeah,
beauty if very subjective.
What was interesting about this experiment
is that it gave me a lot of insight into what
I like about my face.
About what makes it special.
The things about my face that I think are sometimes
unattractive or ugly,
those are part of my calling card.
I think it's really easy to look down on people
who get plastic surgery or plastic in general.
But I think it's important to keep in mind
that there are some people for whom plastic surgery means
the difference between a really full life and not.
So to be clear, I am not advocating for anybody
to get plastic surgery.
But if it's a choice that you wanna make for your body,
make the choices you wanna make for your body.
But on the other hand, I grew up seeing a lot of
faces that were beautiful and perfect in TV and movies
but I never saw any faces that looked like mine.
So why not have my face there now?
(upbeat music)