WUNRN
NEWSWEEK
Excerpts from a new picture book for
the children of women who have cosmetic surgery.
By Karen Springen
| Newsweek Web Exclusive
Apr 15, 2008
.........................................................................................................................
When she was
pregnant with her son Junior, who turns nine this month, Gabriela Acosta
ballooned from 115 pounds to 196. Acosta lost the weight but wound up with
stretched, saggy skin. Even her son noticed it. He told her that her stomach
looked "pruney," the result, he thought, of staying in the shower too
long. So the 29-year-old stay-at-home mom scheduled a consultation with Dr.
Michael Salzhauer, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Bal Harbour, Fla.
Acosta told
Salzhauer that she wasn't sure how to talk to her son about the procedures she
was considering. That's when he showed her the manuscript for his children's
picture book, "My Beautiful Mommy" (Big Tent Books), out this
Mother's Day. It features a perky mother explaining to her child why she's
having cosmetic surgery (a nose job and tummy tuck). Naturally, it has a happy
ending: mommy winds up "even more" beautiful than before, and her
daughter is thrilled.
The
reassuring tale helped win Acosta over—she scheduled breast augmentation and a
tummy tuck. Since February, when she had the surgery, she and Junior have read
the book a half dozen times, and she says it helped him feel excited rather
than scared. "I didn't want him to think [the surgery] was because I was
hurting. It was to make me feel good," she says.
That message
seems to have gotten through. Instead of being uncomfortable about the surgery,
Acosta says her son actually spoke up about it at a big party. "Did you
see her new belly button? It's so pretty!" he said of his mom. "I
think he was proud," she says.
What's the
market for a children's picture book about moms getting cosmetic surgery? No
one specifically tracks the number of tummy-tuck-and-breast-implant combos (or
"mommy makeovers," as they're called), but according to the latest
numbers from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, breast augmentation was
the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure last year, with 348,000 performed
(up 6 percent over 2006). Of those, about one-third were for women over 40 who
often opt for implants to restore lost volume in their breasts due to aging or
pregnancy weight gain. There were 148,000 tummy tucks—up 1 percent from the
previous year.
Salzhauer
got the idea for a book after noticing that women were coming into his office
with their kids in tow. He says that mysterious doctor's visits can be
frightening for children. "Parents generally tend to go into this denial
thing. They just try to ignore the kids' questions completely." But, he
adds, children "fill in the blanks in their imagination" and then
feel worse when they see "mommy with bandages," he says. "With
the tummy tucks, [the mothers] can't lift anything. They're in bed. The kids
have questions."
"My
Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a
plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl
whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her
surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as
I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr.
Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home
looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose
and around her waist.
The text
doesn't mention the breast augmentation, but the illustrations intentionally
show Mom's breasts to be fuller and higher. "I tried to skirt that issue
in the text itself," says Salzhauer. "The tummy lends itself to an
easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can't fit into your clothes.
The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old."
The book
doesn't explain exactly why the mother is redoing her nose post-pregnancy.
Nonetheless, Mom reassures her little girl that the new nose won't just look
"different, my dear—prettier!"
It remains
to be seen how many plastic surgeons will recommend the book to patients.
Richard D'Amico, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, who
gives the book a B grade, says he would "make them aware that it's out
there and leave it up to the patient's discretion." He says the
illustration (specifically the breasts) look somewhat "overdone,"
since most moms are just looking for restoration.
Child
psychiatrist Elizabeth Berger, author of "Raising Kids With
Character," likes the idea of a book for kids. "If the mother is
determined to pursue cosmetic surgery, I think it's terribly important to discuss
it with the child," Berger says. But she says the book is incomplete. She
wishes that the mom had just said something like, "This is silly, but I
really want it anyway," she says. "That is more honest and more
helpful to the child."
Berger
doesn't want to come across as anti-cosmetic surgery, but she notes that it can
be difficult for small kids to understand. "The younger the child, the
more mysterious and potentially hurtful the mother's absence, or mother being
out of commission, or mother looking like she's been beaten up, will be,"
she says. Small children are "concrete" and "sensible" and
think "you go to a doctor because you're hurt or sick," she says.
After considering how their children might react, she says that "some
mothers may realize that the total burden of the child's anxiety might be a
side effect of the procedure they hadn't quite thought through and that might
inspire them to postpone it until the child is older."
Despite the
marketing nickname "mommy
makeover," which can sound like a trip to a day spa, these are serious
surgeries with potential complications that can require additional
procedures—and disruption for kids. With breast augmentation, for example, the
initial operation is not likely to be the last. Implants may last 10 or more
years, but they do not last a lifetime, according to the FDA. About a quarter of all implant
patients have to have another operation within five years due to problems like
leaking, breast asymmetry and encapsulation of the implants.
Then there
are the body image issues raised by cosmetic surgery—especially for daughters.
Berger worries that kids will think their own body parts must need
"fixing" too. The surgery on a nose, for example, may "convey to
the child that the child's nose, which always seemed OK, might be perceived by
Mommy or by somebody as unacceptable," she says.
The book
doesn't go into any medical detail. "They should do more about what the
surgery is," says my own eight-year-old daughter. "Kids," she
says, will want to know more about "what they're going to do to you."
But on the other hand, if they knew more about the procedures they might not
want their mothers to go through with them. As my daughter points out, "a
five-year-old is going to be horrified that their mom is getting water balloons
put in her breasts."
Salzhauer
knows that not everyone will like his book. "There's a good percentage of
your readers who are dead set against plastic surgery, who see it as a sign of
the decadence of Western civilization," he says. "But when done by a
properly trained board-certified plastic surgeon, it really does help make lives
better." Salzhauer may someday get a chance to test that theory—and his
book—at home. His wife hasn't had any work done yet but is pregnant with her
fifth child.
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