Since You Asked: Plastic Surgery

David
Welcome to the Since You Asked show. My name is David Stewart. I am the founder of AGEIST magazine.

Susan
Hi, my name is Susan Guidi. I’m a 66-year-old competitive bodybuilder and standup comic.

Rob
Hi, my name is Rob Angel. I’m the creator of Pictionary, traveler and explorer.

David
And since you asked, we’re going to answer your questions. Welcome to Since You Asked. It’s great to have you with us. We have some amazing advisors here, and we’re going to try our best to answer your questions. Let’s check in with them today. Susan, how are we doing today?

Susan
I am fabulous. I got my workout in early this morning. I got my dose of early sunlight exposure to set the tone of the day and my melatonin for sleeping this evening. I had a good sleep score, so I’m really happy.

David
What was the workout today? Upper body, lower body, whole body? 

Susan
A little bit of each. Lower, a little HIIT, a little upper body as well.

David
Okay, Rob, how about you? How did you start your day today?

Rob
I woke up. I went for a walk, a power walk. And it was so frickin’ cold. I quit and went to the gym. But it was great. So I just did a little workout, feel good, raised my heart rate, got on with my day. It’s beautiful.

David
Nice. I love exercise in the morning. Gets everything going. My friend Kathy Smith says: win the morning, win the day. So, this week, we have a question from a woman. She says, “I’m considering breast enhancements, plastic surgery, and I don’t quite know how I feel about this.” What do you guys think about this? So, I think this goes to the heart of plastic surgery, cosmetic enhancements, and there is a wide spectrum of things here that can go on.

Susan
So, I like to talk from experience, and I got breast enhancement when I got divorced. I was dating a younger man. And you have to think a lot about why you’re doing it. I felt very pressured by this young man and I wanted to please him. And I have to say, I was not mad about the results at all.

And for a long time, man, I felt super hot. But the thing about breast enhancement is that after a long period of time, if you gain any weight, you know, you’re dealing with enhancement and then heaviness. And I ultimately chose to have them removed. 

But cosmetic surgery, I think there’s a psychological component to it that you really have to take super serious and say: Am I doing it for myself? Would I have done this or was I doing it to people please? And again, I wasn’t unhappy with the results, but I think I felt a little bit of regret that I did it more for this guy than I did it for myself.

Rob
I completely agree about the psychological why you’re doing it. So understand that. So we could get into that deeper. If you want a breast enhancement, if you want to have your face done, as long as you’re not really going hard, absolutely. Go kicking and screaming. I mean, I had my eyelids done. They were bothering me for 15 years. And I finally said: Screw it. And I found the best doctor. I found the best of everything, right? I didn’t just go in blindly. And I finally just said: I’m going to go do this.

And I did. And I am so happy I did, because every day looking in the mirror, I was going, you know, I’ve got to fix this. So, get to the best doctor. But if you want to have something done, try injectables, whatever it is, try other things before you go under the knife or you really have something life altering physically.

But I’m all for it. Color your hair. Do anything. I’m all for it.

David
I have a couple of thoughts, and I’ve interviewed a number of plastic surgeons on this topic. And just for the record, I get Botox. I love Botox because otherwise I look kind of mean and angry all the time.

And I had Invisalign on my teeth at, like, age 64 because my teeth have been crooked since I was a kid. And it bothered me. And now they don’t bother me. I love my teeth now. One of the things that I’ve heard from plastic surgeons is that when people have some kind of work done, oftentimes they get sort of ostracized by their friends that, like, “Oh my God, how could you do this?” Or there’s this, like, weird social thing that happens. Susan, did you experience any of that?

Susan
I didn’t enhance them so much that it was like, you know, I went from 0 to 60. But again, what you bring up, the point, I think, is that when friends start to kind of push back, I experienced that more when I did this weight loss transformation. I just lost the weight. I didn’t have anything plastic surgery-wise.

But, man, I lost friends. I lost some friends that were like 35 years as I took off the weight and stepped into this confidence.

Rob
Do you think that they were looking at themselves going, “Oh, shit. Yes, Look at her. Now I’ve got to take care of myself. I don’t want to. So it’s easier just not to hang out with her than transform myself.”? God love you for doing it, Susan. My goodness. I mean.

Susan
100%. And that’s what you realize, is that your eye surgery, the breast job, it’s just a statement for “Do I feel better about myself?” And if you feel better about yourself and that gives you the confidence to, again, maybe step into something that you didn’t think was possible to do, you know.

Like weight loss for me. When I did it, it was just once I shed that it wasn’t so much about the esthetic; it was who I became. In the absence of that, I just felt like, in the supermarket, I want to say hello to everybody. I’m happy. I just feel better about myself. But some people aren’t happy. They want you to be miserable with them and stay away.

David
Of all the things we’ve ever published in AGEIST or talked about, this is the most problematic. Like, if I just feel like entertaining myself and get some audience reaction, I’ll put up Madonna and people go batshit. Like, “I love her. I hate her. How could she do this to herself?” Or, “This is wonderful what she’s done.” And I think that there’s this component of aging naturally, whatever that means.

Like, somehow lipstick is okay, but you can’t do injectables. I don’t know. I never understood that spectrum. It’s sort of this Calvinist thing. Like, This is an act of my age, this is an act of God or my breast size or whatever. It’s just how I was born, therefore I’m going to stay this way. And I think that’s fine. I respect that things can get very polarized with that.

Rob
But to your point, if people are changing mentally all the time, they’re taking coaching, they’re learning how to do something new. This just happens to be a physical change. Everybody’s growing, everybody’s changing. And so get over yourself. You want to do it, do it. If you don’t, God love you for that as well. But quit judging other people.

Quit worrying about everybody else, right? Just worry about yourself. If that’s what you want to do, just go for it.

David
Exactly.

Susan
It’s the judging part. Who asked you? When did you become the judge of who I am? I do. To your point about Madonna, I think you start to see this, you know, plastic surgery can be addictive. So when you do one thing, there is a tendency to sort of say, oh, now I’m going to do this, and now I’m going to do that.

And I think, unfortunately, in Madonna’s case, she did take it to a point where her face is so altered. It’s not as flattering. 

David
And now you’re judging!

Susan
I am judging, but it’s unfortunate.

Rob
But you’re still a fan of her music. If she’s on stage, you’ll still go. She’s still singing, she’s still acting. She’s still out there. So, you know, you can judge a little bit of somebody, but not the whole thing. So I guess it’s a little complicated. 

Susan
I think you have to be authentically yourself. I mean, if I want to lob my head off and stick another head on here, I get to do that.

David
I’ll leave you with a little anecdote. I was in Rio de Janeiro and I interviewed Ivo Pitanguy and Ivo Pitanguy is the inventor of modern plastic surgery, and he originally invented it for childhood burn victims who had been, like, disfigured; or people with cleft palate, things like that. And his office is filled with all these words.

And, you know, rumor has it that he’s the one who did all the eighties movie stars and made them look so fab. And I asked Ivo, I said, and Ivo was about 80, I think, when I spoke to him, and Ivo was, like, fabulously wealthy, had like a plane and is on an island in the clinic. Ivo was the place to go in Rio. And so I said, “Ivo, so how do you feel about this?” He’s like, “I’ve removed all the mirrors from my house. I have no mirrors.” I said, “So, you’re not interested in doing anything.” He was like, “No, no, I can’t use this. Like, I’m too obsessive. I can’t go there. In fact, I don’t even want to look at myself.” So he went to the other extreme.

So, anyway, a really good discussion today, guys. Thank you so much. Send us your questions. I mean, we have these amazing people here and provoke them.

Rob
We love poking the bear.

David
Oh, yeah. Well, I got to say, who’s the bear here anyway? Guys, have a wonderful week. We’ll see everybody next week. Take care.

Susan
Thank you, David.

Featuring:
Susan Guidi
Rob Angel
David Stewart

Have a question for us? Comment below or drop us a line: info@sinceyouasked.co