Cheek Implants
My aunt, Sarah Gonzalez is a model and an actress who grew up on the streets of New York. Now 28 and a dazzling figure, she is ready to give all it takes for her to become a Hollywood icon by all means. The journey to Beverly Hills can be tasking, arduous and surgical. Yes, surgical! Sarah is so sure that she had always been rejected at movie auditions because of her shallow cheeks and sunken looks which gave her away as a witch rather than an angelic Hollywood sensation. Now, she is ready to change all that. I had to accompany her all the way to a posh plastic surgery clinic in California where she had gone for her cheek implants or what the young cosmetic surgeon stylishly referred to as a cheek augmentation with bilateral cheek implants.
The procedure lasted for an hour and half and it cost a whopping $6000 in cash! While my aunt submitted herself to the surgeon’s knife, I decided to befriend the junior doctors around and know more about these luxurious cheek implants which was like the rave of the moment. From the doctors, I realized that Sarah was not the only body-crazy personality that came for facial implants. I was told that other patients included musicians, models, actresses, sales executives, sportspeople and even politicians! A common streak that runs through all these people that come for implants was that they place so much value on their appearance and believe strongly that the face is the mirror of the body. Such people, like Sarah will have no qualms in shedding off a few thousand bucks just to have that ‘my-favourite TV star look’! That is so amazing!
I also learnt that the materials used for the cheek implants can be natural or artificial. The natural type includes the person’s fat. This is called autologous fat transfer in which some fat is removed from a part of the body and injected into the cheeks! Ouch! For the artificial or synthetic cheek implants, the most popular material used by surgeons is the silicon implant which is usually derived from soft silicon. It has been used by plastic surgeons for years in facial reconstruction and breast augmentation procedures. Silicon implants have various advantages as they can be removed easily or replaced whenever the patient wants. However, this does not mean that silicon does not have its own shortcomings. It does have.
Other materials used nowadays include the one called biomedical cheek implants manufactured by a company called MEDPOR. These ones too have their own advantages and disadvantages. The lecture was abruptly cut short when Sarah came out of the operating room. I rushed to meet her and see if she was alright. Though she looked more beautiful and different, she kept complaining of discomfort and numbness in her ‘new’ cheeks for about two days. I guess those were the side-effects. At least no pain, no gain. Anyway, that was years ago and Sarah is now the ultimate screen goddess, with her lovely cheeks, of course!