Truly enlightening book! The fact that the author herself has had cosmetic surgery really brought an interesting perspective to the topic. Some of the sections about the current legality of cosmetic surgery were a bit dated, but the book is from 2006 so that's to be expected.

graphic.

Revealed a lot about the world of plastic surgery and profit. Hope we reevaluate our beauty standards soon.

Interesting read about the plastic surgery industry from over a decade ago. The writing flowed really well and had an anthropological feel to it.

Great book for fans of comparing the present and past as you get to see how much more extreme it’s become now and what current trends the author would write about today.

interesting, but kind of fluffy.

This is pretty horrifying and sad, but it's important information about an aspect of American society.

Interesting read, but a bit dated. I liked how the author compared her own forays into cosmetic enhancements to how plastic surgery has changed over the years. It was especially interesting to learn about some of the ways different procedures were born.

For example, widespread reconstructive plastic surgery arose from treating soliders' injuries after WWI. As medicine advanced, soldiers didn't die from their injuries as quickly as they once did. The rate of death during wartime has continually decreased over time - in WWII, 30% of soldiers died from war-related injuries. In Vietnam, 24%. And despite how much destructive weapons have become, the mortality rate for Iraq and Afghanistan was 10%.

The first nose jobs date back to 600BC when it was a common punishment to cut off people's noses for crimes; the first reconstructions were done with tissue from the cheek. In the 1500s, Gaspare Tagliacozzi - known as the father of plastic surgery as he used modern anatomical medical knowledge alongside his surgical skills - took the nose job a step further. There was much unrest in Bologna at the time, and Tagliacozzi saw many nose injuries from duels, skirmishes, and assaults. He used skin from the patient's upper, inner arm by creating a deep incision in the arm and then placing dressings inside the wound to keep it open. The patient would then have their nose bandaged to their arm (sounds so uncomfortable!) until the scar tissue from the arm would start to grow onto the nose wound. It would eventually be separated and then there would be several more surgeries to shape the tissue into a nose-like structure. Since the new proboscis was made of scar tissue which doesn't have a full supply of blood vessels, they tended to stiffen in cold weather and hard sneeze could propel them right off the patient's face. !!

Plastic surgery eventually shifted from reconstruction to cosmetic. There was an interesting discussion about how cosmetic surgery is so at odds with the traditional healthcare model provided by doctors with insurance companies as the middleman and arbiter of what is considered medically necessary and how much they will pay for various tests, treatments, etc. Since cosmetic surgery isn't covered by insurance, the market tends to be very transparent as far as pricing goes. The industry's growth has been aided by bureaucracy of healthcare, allowing surgeons to practice more freely and often for more money.

Overall, an interesting and informative read though the book is a bit old.

Well written and often personal account by NY Times Style section author, but too frequently veers into irrelevant asides

Thinking of getting breast implants or botox injections? You might want to read this first. Get the scoop on the positives and negatives of a host of beauty treatments including liposuction, stomach stapling, microdermabrasion, and more from a New York Times reporter who's been there and done that.

Very interesting book. I've used it as references for many essays... it's sad but all too true to think the society we live in today is so wrapped up with the ideal of material beauty, and will go at lengths to achieve it.

My interest waned somewhat towards the last 50 pages or so, but other than that it was a decently engrossing read for a non-fiction.

Alex seems to be standing on the side that discourages cosmetic surgery(not reconstructive plastic surgery) but hers is an interesting perspective because she's actually had some work done herself, too. She knows what it's like to have been gripped by the addictive mentality of those who get cosmetic surgery regularly, whether it's light or more risky procedures. She doesn't tell readers what to do, but delves into the topic through various perspectives: the doctors, patients, industry professionals and salesmen, displaying a multi-faceted and complicated tangle of interests and agendas.
Reading the self-interested motives of some of the professionals she has interviewed re-affirmed my recent realisation that you shouldn't put all your faith in your doctor or a person of authority blindly. Do as much research as possible and verify them, check for any affiliations, and whether your safety is in their best interests.

It was also sad to read about the cosmetic surgery deaths, it's mind-boggling how people would choose to put themselves at risk, that they could've been avoided had they not fallen for the temptations and pressures of society.

Fascinating and eye-opening, Beauty Junkies by Alex Kuczynski educates and reminds us to take a hard look at the extremes we have reached, a wake up call to the shallowness and toxic beliefs that we've already taken to new heights.

Appealing, well-researched, not very objective account of cosmetic surgery's history and future. While the author is highly intelligent, she seems to live in a rarefied world in which it is assumed that just about every normal person gets cosmetic surgery eventually. I was horrified to read that not only had the author had an eye lift, but her cleaning lady--a "Guatemalan grandmother"--had also had one. So maybe I'm the one living in a rarefied world, because if my friends and neighbors are getting tucks and lifts, they ain't telling me. And they don't have that awful, slightly surprised expression common to people who've had work done on their faces, so I think they are still cosmetic-surgery virgins. :-)

"A reed-slender body is so important in Hollywood and New York that many starlets have begun, on the advice of their personal trainers, taking a steroid called clenbuterol that is used to treat asthma in horses. It is called "clen," for short—as a mere abbreviation but also as a nod to the notion that being smaller, being skinnier, ingesting nothing somehow cleanses a girl, makes her better and shinier and just a touch more luminescent than the rest of us. The steroid, ingested in regular doses over just a few weeks, rewards users with a so-called sample-size figure, a size 2 or smaller—so that the stylists who dress these mini-celebrities can get their clients' clothes for free from designers. . . . Clen can also increase your risk of stroke and heart attack, destroys endurance, and stiffens the heart muscle. In the end, you'll look great. But you might be dead."

"Sports Illustrated, once proudly implant-free, used its first surgically enhanced model in the late 1990s, after a longtime editor (a woman who was opposed to implants on aesthetic grounds) retired. Today, as many as half the women in the annual swimsuit issue . . . have had surgery."