Dr. Lee's Blog

To fully understand where I am now, you have to know where it all started. I have always really disliked my neck. There are baby pictures of me with a double chin. Viewers of these photos always remark on my cute double chin, followed by comments about my enormous eyes. To be totally honest, the comments may not always be in that order, maybe my inner filter distorts my memory. I always see that too soft chin first.

I grew up looking at others' necks. I really liked the swan ones. We probably all admire in other people what we wish for in ourselves. Often, we lose site of our good characteristics in our wishing for better versions of what we have that we don't like. I grew up in a high school where a rhinoplasty was the summer activity between junior and senior year. My best friend was scheduled for one of these. She was Persian and beautiful and exotic. Rhinoplasty back then was much less elegant than it is now; there was no subtlety and the operated noses often looked "done" and the same as all the other noses done by that surgeon. I sat her down for a serious talk. I told her she was beautiful, her eyes were fabulous, her neck and jaw were fabulous, she was exotic and her nose went with her face and a "Dr. Diamond #3" would not fit her at all. She told me that I had a perfect little nose, so I had NO idea how it felt to look someone in the eye in conversation and have a voice in the back of my head running with "he's staring at my nose, he's staring at my nose, he's staring at my nose." Wow. She loved my nose? I never paid any attention to my nose. Did she not see my chin and my neck? Apparently, she didn't. She noticed my nose, I noticed her neck. Point made.

In fact, this single discussion has been the strongest influence on my practice of plastic surgery to this day. It is not about what the outside world sees, it is about what the individual sees from the inside out. It is true that this can be extreme and dysfunctional, but that's a topic for another blog. I will say that my friend had her rhinoplasty and it changed her life. She felt like a swan instead of the ugly duckling. Her confidence soared and she opened up (and of course, she DID have that swan neck.)

Back to the topic of my surgery. My neck and chin always bothered me but in March, I taped two segments for a new TV advertising campaign. Before this, I worked live, and in the studio. I was not thrilled with the studio lighting or my positioning relative to the camera, but I sounded good and I said in last week's blog, I just kinda listened to myself on tape and did not look. These new segments were filmed in the office. I don't know if it was the lighting, or the color I was wearing, or just that my neck has continued to worsen, but when I looked at these new taped and produced segments, I was horrified. I LOOKED AWFUL! Old and droopy and dull and tired. My face started at my collarbones with no neck in between clavicle and chin. The whole thing wobbled when I moved. OMG! This did not look like me, the inner me, the vital me. What I saw in that image did not represent who I am. Those two minute segments jump started my personal cosmetic odyssey.