Excerpts from
A Little Work...Behind the Doors of a Park Avenue Plastic SurgeoN
By Z. Paul Lorenc MD FACS


Celebrity Catastrophes And Other
Horrible Mistakes I Have Seen

How can you tell when a celebrity has had plastic surgery?

When he or she denies it.

Okay, that may be a bit too flippant. But it always makes me laugh when a superstar goes on and on and on about her yoga, and her homeopathy. and her workut routine, and her Ayurvedic face oils, and all herb other “beauty secrets” when in truth her beauty secret is the plastic surgeon she sees on a regular basis for every conceivable injectible coupled with as much surgery as she can stand.

Actually, I feel sorry for celebrities when it comes to maintaining their looks. As Hollywood standards of beauty have become more and more ludicrous---the ultrathin yet sublimely toned body, complete with large, perky breasts and a perfectly shaped derriere, faces devoid of any lines of character and humor---the need to appear young and perfect becomes not a luxury but a necessity for actors and actresses trying to stay in the game. As it stands, they don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Their faces and bodies are their livlihood. If they choose to be actresses, they know they will be exposing themselves forever more to the merciless gaze of public scrutiny, which damns them for getting older yet mocks them for wanting to look younger and better.

So celebrities flock to plastic surgeons. And pretend they don’t.

I can let you in on a few trade secrets. Trained eyes can instantly spot the telltale signs of surgical procedures, especially when things go wrong. Even untrained eyes can easily pick up on asymmetry. If you think a face is somehow “off,” it probably is.

From top to bottom:

Hairline: A hairline that is too high is a dead giveaway as are sideburns that start up too high. Excessive pulling of the skin during a facelift or a browlift gives that result.

Facelift: The face is pulled so tight you can practically bounce a quarter off the cheekbones.  If the skin is pulled too tightly under the chin, we have a nickname for that: popsicle on a stick.

Nose: If a nose appears too small, too turned up, too thin or too chiseled, then you know that too much cartilage was taken out. The biggest giveaway: You can look right into the nostrils.

Breasts: Breasts should not bob up around the shoulders, nearly grazing the chin. They also should not look like unnatural, immobile spheres. And they won’t if they’re the correct size and put under the muscle.

I don’t do pectoral implants for men either. If  pecs look like grapefruits on the chest instead of having a natural flowing curvature, blame it on implants.

Buttocks: The buttocks have a bizarre new shape. I even heard about somebody who used breast implants in a woman’s butt.  A butt is not a breast. You sit on it, lie down on it. Your gluteus maximus is the largest muscle group in your body. It’s ridiculous to put a foreign body in an area that is tension bearing.  In fact, it’s more than ridiculous. It’s insane.