Beauty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flicking through her photos on her living room couch, Julia Quinn recounts the array of plastic surgery procedures she has undergone.

"That is when I had my eye done again, a bump taken out of my nose," she says, looking at a photo of her severely swollen face.

There isn't much cosmetic surgery that this housewife from Surrey in the UK has not had done.

A few years ago, feeling unhappy about the lines around her eyes and mouth, she first dabbled in surgery. She opted for a private clinic in the UK, but after a bad experience there she started looking around for alternative places to get the work done. That's when she first discovered that South Africa offered the same procedures at a fraction of the cost, she says.

"You get a lot of good surgeons and dentists in South Africa," says Quinn. "It's like a holiday -- you are looked after, the weather is fine."

January is a good time to flee the UK's winter weather, so Quinn is heading back to Johannesburg for more work. This time it's a mini facelift and more liposuction. In total, she will have spent nearly $15,000 on surgery in South Africa. She says should would have spent a lot more if she had continued to be treated in the UK.

In a suburb in northern Johannesburg Lorraine Melvill is running around trying to organize hospital visits for her clients staying in her guest house. She started her business, "Surgeon and Safari," back in 2000 and since then she has had people from all over the world, including Quinn, come to her to facilitate their cosmetic procedures, and perhaps go on safari too.

"For most people in the first-world economies like the UK, and especially in America, their biggest desire is to go on African safari," she explains, "and yet their greatest want in their life was to have plastic surgery, so why not put the two together?"

Like most companies, however, Surgeon and Safari was hit by the global financial crisis, particularly as a number of Melvill's clients were borrowing money to afford their procedures.

She says: "When there was a greater volume of people coming through then it was people who were borrowing money, for example, or using their credit cards to pay for the plastic surgery. So they weren't necessarily as educated or as financially secure, they weren't the typical baby boomer.

"So when the economic recession came along, that was the first market that dropped away because, obviously, there was a credit crunch, so that's the first thing you stop spending your money on, something like plastic surgery."

However, whilst the United States and eurozone economies may have languished, Melvill says she has benefited from the growth of some African countries' economies.

"There is a huge emergence of local Africans that chose to come to South Africa for elective surgery, whether it be breast reduction, tummy tucks, lipo," she says.

"I would say one of the biggest countries is Zambia," she adds. "There is quite a big market coming out of Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana ... Their economies are growing and therefore their middle classes are growing and therefore the need increases."

Chetan Patel works at Johannesburg's private Mediclinic, in Sandton. In the three years that he has been a private cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon, he says that he has also seen an increase in clients flying in from parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

"Certainly we are seeing people from very high income groups," says Patel. "From a regional African point of view, countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, the DRC, all play an important role where socio-economic factors all dictate that there are more and more people who can afford this kind of surgery and so we are seeing a larger amount of those people coming certainly to Johannesburg for that kind of surgery."

These clients are very clear about what work they want done, says Patel. "For instance, they would come to me and say 'I would like Jennifer Lopez's butt' or 'I would like to look like Kim Kardashian,' and the obvious body features of those two individuals are curvaceous hips and thighs with an augmented or accentuated buttock.

"Other than that, I think more and more African women are conscious of what their lower bodies look like, so what their tummy looks like, so they would like tummy tuck procedures, for instance."

Cosmetic surgery isn't new to Africa -- after all, in 2005, the wife of the former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo died after having liposuction in a Spanish clinic. But Patel says that from what he is seeing this is no longer just the preserve of the super rich or political elites.

"It is not a necessity it is a luxury, so I see the trend [in having plastic surgery in] the next five to 10 years increasing amongst people from the rest of Africa," he says.

For now, though, it's people like Quinn who are keeping Melvill and Patel busy; repeat customers are the norm in the area of elective surgeries, Melvill says.

But whilst Quinn will be having her surgery in South Africa, and will be recuperating in the sunshine, she has decided against going on safari.

In fact, Melvill says that these days most of her clients opt instead to spend the day on a different type of safari; they choose to visit the nearby designer shops.
 

Istanbul’s health and beauty industry is becoming ‘hairier’ as facial hair transplants rise in popularity amongst follicle-challenged men, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.

For many men, the measure of status, strength and manliness is a thick moustache. Cosmetic surgeons in Turkey have responded accordingly as Istanbul reaps the benefits of ‘beauty’ tourism.

Tulunay, a Turkish doctor, said that over ten of his 60 monthly patients now request facial hair transplants.

The doctor describes the societal preference for increased facial hair in the region.

“Both in Turkey and in Arab countries facial hair is associated with masculinity, and its lack can cause social difficulties. In Turkish there is a word for it: köse – baldness of the face – and it is usually not considered a good thing”, Tulunay said.

A mainstay in the ‘hairy’ business for the more than ten years, Ali Mezdegi, a doctor, said: “Thick hair is a status symbol and a sign of strength and virility.”
He added that Arabs make up 75 percent of his clients.

A Turkish tourism agency specializes in hair implant tour packages that costs approximately $2,300 for the four day long procedure and treatment, which also covers medical and overnight expenses.

Mezdegi explained that over 50 percent of his patients were channeled either through such a tourism agency or via word of mouth.

The agency’s general manager, Irfan Atik, said that most of his clients are from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Iraq. Atik notes that, in the West, clean shaven males are more prominent and fashionable as compared to the Middle East.
 

Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin competes during the 2012 Miss USA Presentation Show in Las Vegas. A judge believes her disappointment at missing the top 15 motivated her to call the pageant rigged.

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people? For former Miss Pennsylvania, it might begin to feel $5 million lighter.
Sheena Monnin, 27, was flabbergasted when she was ordered Tuesday to pay billionaire Donald Trump’s company $5 million for accusing the Miss Universe Organization, which also runs Miss USA, of rigging competitions.
 
“I was shocked that was ruled against me, frankly,” the Pennsylvanian beauty told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Saturday. “The most logical course of action is to fight (the ruling).”
 
Monnin posted her initial response to the ruling Thursday on her official Facebook support page.
 
“When I stated my opinion that the Miss USA pageant was rigged,” she wrote, “I was not aware of the clause in the Miss USA contract which says that the Miss Universe Organization, Donald Trump, and others have the legal right to choose the top five and the winner.”

The executive vice president of the Trump Organization said Donald Trump and other officials have never influenced pageant results, calling the clause allowing such behavior "protection for the organization and its owners." Monnin said she plans to fight the ruling against her.

Her father, Philip Monnin, recently showed her the clause in a contract she signed that reserves the right for the top five pageant officials to select the top five finalists.
 
But Trump’s right-hand man, Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said that power has not been used. Furthermore, he accused Monnin of blatantly disregarding the truth.

“It‘s protection for the Miss Universe pageant and its owners,” Cohen responded Saturday. “It has never been used. The judge‘s decisions have never been overruled by Mr. Trump, NBC or the Miss Universe Organization.”
 
Cohen added that the judges chose Olivia Culpo of Rhode Island on without any outside interference.

A judge ruled that Sheena Monnin's statements cost the Miss Universe Organization up to $5 million in sponsorship for 2013.
Monnin, on the other hand, said that the clause’s existence corroborates her accusations.
 
“By their own words,” she said, “the Miss Universe Organization’s contract proves the plausibility of my statements.”

Former U.S. District Court Magistrate Theodore H. Katz – who thinks Monnin was frustrated that she did not place in the top 15 – said that her allegations cost the pageant up to $5 million in sponsorship money for 2013.
 
Monnin resigned from the pageant in June. She wrote on Facebook that another contestant “saw the list of the Top 5 BEFORE THE SHOW EVER STARTED.”