What does it mean to be beautiful? Over the last two decades our cultural beauty standards have undergone a dramatic evolution. This is especially true of the plastic surgeon’s office, where women are no longer only looking to achieve the idealized perfection of yesterday – the perfect breasts, the perfect waist, the perfect nose – and so on. Instead, many of today’s patients are looking to achieve something else entirely: self-confidence; happiness; balance.

Whole Body Beauty

As cosmetic surgery is seen less and less as a standalone solution and instead as one of several powerful tools that can be used to help women age “consciously,” clients are bringing their beauty and wellness goals into the plastic surgeon’s office. In addition to cosmetic procedures they are talking about mindfulness practices like meditation, exercise habits, and nutrition. This kind of “whole body beauty” represents a new ambition to re-align the outside with the inside in an effort to positively reconnect with the self.

Beauty-Oriented Wellness

As we move away from disease-oriented medicine toward wellness-oriented medicine, we’ve gotten a clearer understanding of the many nuanced and complex ways the mind and body communicate with one another. Wellness in this context usually refers to the process where we make conscious choices to lead a healthier life, touching on diet, nutrition, exercise, and emotional health. Whole body beauty expands the conversation to include the many ways beauty and wellness are interconnected, making beauty an equally important player and part of the total wellness journey.

A growing number of plastic surgeons have begun to adopt wellness services into their practices, with some going a step further to create integrative experiences that complement their cutting-edge surgical techniques with natural medications, clean beauty products, homeopathy, meditation, acupuncture, lymphatic drainage and holistic facials and massage therapies – all from within the environment of their medical office. Today’s marriage of plastic surgery with wellness-oriented medicine seems a natural and even logical evolution. Introducing: beauty-oriented wellness.

Self-Confidence Through Self-Care

Many plastic surgeons recognize that while they may literally be in the business of personal transformation, today’s woman needs more than a quick nip and tuck to be her very best self. With the right kind of support from their physician, many women are now finding they can advance self-discovery, increase their self-confidence and improve their overall wellness through engaging in regular and considered acts of self-care.

So, whether that means treating aging skin to a blepharoplasty (eye-lift), undergoing a tummy tuck, getting a holistic facial, talking to a therapist, enjoying regular massages, starting a mindfulness practice, or all of the above, women and the doctors who treat them are striving for a new definition of beauty, one that considers what’s happening on the inside to be every bit as important as what’s happening on the outside.

Dr. Tamy M. Faierman is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon, writer, beauty and wellness expert, and founder of the Tamy M. Faierman Holistic Spa and Wellness Center. Her office is located at 17130 Royal Palm Boulevard, Suite 1, in the Windmill Professional Campus. For more information, please call 954-322-2742 or visit www.reshapeyourimage.com.

Originally published in Our City Weston | September 2019