Surgeon to the Stars Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Center - Breast Augmentation - Face Lifts

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The San Francisco Chronicle - April 11, 1993, Sunday Edition

Face-Lift City In Palm Springs, anything goes. Wrinkles. Bulges. Double chins. Is this the shape

By ANN JAPENGA

When I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, my family's frequent jaunts to Palm Springs felt like punishment -- rny three siblings and I alternating bouts of heatstroke and carsickness in the rear-facing back seat of the station wagon. Even then, the place struck me as ... different. The arid desert gave way to golf courses, swimming pools and gushing fountains. The streets were named for ancient show biz types -- Bob Hope Drive, Frank Sinatra Drive -- and filled with old ladies disguised in blond bobs and youthful tennis togs. Once past the age of consent, I didn't think I'd ever willingly go back, no rnatter how many date shakes they promised me.

But my parents retired a few years ago and bought a condo in Palm Springs. And now that I'm living in the chill Northwest, I find a trip to the desert to be more pleasure than punishment.

It was on one of my periodic visits that I reaiized just how different the place had become. I was floating on a flimsy raft in my parents' pool late one afternoon, listening to the whir of homeward-bound golf carts and leafing through Palm Springs Life, a magazine devoted to ,local goings-on. I came upon an advertisement for a local plastic surgeon in which a satisfied customer described her face-lift. "Even though I'm only in my mid-30s," she wrote, "I was beginning to find it difficult to admire the reflection I confronted in the mirror every day."

Pushing off the end of the pool with my toes, I contemplated this information. At 37, I was already older than the writer. Further, I grew up in Southern California, where the purpose of summer vacation was to return to school more sun-damaged than everyone else. Yet it had never occurred to me that I might want to surgically intervene in my inevitable deterioration.

Turning back to the magazine, I counted eight other glossy, expensive ads for cosmetic surgeons. Their copy suggested that a face-lift should be viewed matter-of-factly, as a routine part of a woman's beauty regimen -- "facial rejuvenation" was the term they used for chemical peels. "In the '90s, cosmetic surgery has become a restorative process that can uplift both the body and the soul," read one ad.

Later that evening, when the golf carts were garaged for the night and tiny bats fluttered over 10,000 glowing swimming pools, I tuned the TV to the local cable station and caught the end of an infomercial by another desert plastic surgeon, who talked about breast surgery as blithely as if she were giving home-improvement tips.

Then I began to notice the handiwork of the beauty doctors everywhere. Next to rne in the checkout line at Jensen's market stood a woman with a face so taut you could bounce a golf ball on it, but her hands were age-spotted and bent. At a resort coffee shop, I saw a woman wearing sunglasses and a hat to cover fresh bruises under her eyes. I was in a retirement community, but few of the faces around me looked older than 50.

It began to dawn on me that I might have stumbled onto a vision of the future.

Consider: Once only celebrities had face-lifts, then only celebrities and the very rich. But what starts with the rich often trickles down to the masses. Since 1981, the number of cosmetic surgery procedures performed each year in the United States has increased by 69 percent, according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. Today, 70 percent of cosmetic surgery patients have household incomes of less than $50,000 -- and 30 percent less than 5 25,000. There is an acceptance of cosmetic surgery that would have been hard to imagine 10 years ago.

And the Palm Springs crowd has taken that acceptance one step further. In most of the country, plastic surgery is still looked upon as a luxury. "In Palm Springs, it's seen as a necessity. It's expected," says plastic surgeon and part-time Palm Springs resident Jarnes Yahr. Desert socialite 7o-Ann Forbes agrees. "Once you're 30 or 35, everyone is having something done."

During a rash of 108-degree days last summer, I returned to the desert to take a closer look at a culture built around the scalpel and liposuction hose. I wanted to see what life rnight be like for all of us if we followed Palm Springs' lead. Like my childhood visits to the desert, it was an uncomfortable trip.

Cosmetic surgeon David Morrow jabs a needle repeatedly under Cheryl eyelids. Larum grimaces; her feet jerk under a thin cotton blanket. She has taken a Valium, but is awake for her eyelid lift. After the local anesthetic takes effect, Morrow grasps his laser like a fat crayon, aims t he red beam, and traces two blue lines defining a half moon shape on the upper eyelid. There is no blood, just the smell of burning flesh and the high-pitched whine of the laser.

"Compared to doing this with a scalpel, that's gorgeous," Morrow says to me as I observe. He uses the laser again, strips off the piece of eyelid, and scrapes it onto a square of gauze on his instrument tray. The removal of skin and muscle is meant to "lift" the eyelid, which, like so many parts of the human body, starts to droop after fighting gravity for a sufficient number of years.

"That's the upper lid," Morrow says briskly, bandaging the patient's right eye and moving on to the left.

In scrubs, under operating lights, Morrow looks wan, a little blotchy, hardly like the glamorous fellow I'd seen in his ads. But when I drop by later, at the end of the workday, the doctor is transformed. He is wearing makeup and an expensive suit, and swirling a snifter of amber liquid in his hand. Me could be a country gentleman relaxing after a fox hunt.

I almost trip over the reason for the doctor's metamorphosis: There are cables slinking across the pale carpet and open camera boxes lying about. Morrow is in the midst of a photo shoot for yet another elaborate advertisement for Palm Springs Life magazine, one in two readers of which is a millionaire.

Inside every Palm Springs cosmetic surgeon, I find, there are really two people. There is the sober professional, bent to the task of stitching and cutting. Then there is the image-maker, who will spend $20,000 for a multi-page magazine ad, and pose with a fast car or shapely model to convince you he or she is the best.

While doctors in other specialties still engage in quaint debates over the propriety of advertising, cosmetic surgeons here long ago pulled out all the stops. That's because people don't need cosrnetic surgery the way they may need, say, a kidney transplant. "This is purely elective surgery. You need it like you need a hole in the head," says Rudi Unterthiner, a desert plastic surgeon.

A family of four is seated in a plastic surgeon's waiting room, where they have a view of a concrete-lined lake and, beyond, the dry and pimply Santa Rosa mountains.

It's hard to tell which mernber of this cosmetically gifted family is the patient, but I surrnise it's the daughter of about 14, who has the slightest blush of acne on otherwise lovely porcelain cheeks.

The two girls and their mother are flipping almost frantically through magazines, pausing now and then to point and comment. They are engaged in a popular desert pastime: the hunt for female imperfection.

Aha. The fair-skinned daughter has found a loser.

"Daddy, don't you think she's ugly?" she asks, showing her father a photograph of a model.

Dad appraises the woman. "I don't know," he says. He has apparently decided to be generous. After all, his daughter is at a sensitive age. "It could just be a bad picture."

Qne of the few female plastic surgeons in the area, Jane Norton is up an operation on the afternoon I visit her office. I spend a long time in the waiting room paging through loose-leaf binders with gory photographs of freshly incised noses and breasts.

When Norton finally appears, she looks like an exhausted intern. She shuffles aiong in her scrub booties, lab coat flapping and dark hair falling in her eyes. There is an indentation from her scrub cap etched across her forehead. She won't tell me her age, but she looks to be in her 30s, young enough to have felt the full brunt of feminism when she was in medical school.

I decide to come right out and ask what is most on my mind: Does Norton ever feel like her business exploits women7

The doctor looks me over and points out that I'm wearing makeup. "I just do the ultimate makeup," she says.

Linda Morrow, surgeon David Morrow's wife, has been discussing the use of early surgical touch-ups. (Current thinking in the desert is that the time to start making cosmetic surgery part of your routine is in your 40s.) Suddenly, she leans close to me, examining my face the way she might a flounder in the fish case. She has big white teeth, a Roman nose, snug-fitting skin; she looks to be around 40.

As she zooms toward me, I realize that it's a precarious tirne for me to be in Palm Springs. I am on the cusp of decay but not yet ready for major reconstruction. Everywhere I go, strangers appraise me; they appraise everyone.

Their verdict, which I will hear over and over during my stay: "You have some time left on you," as if my epidermis were a ticking parking meter with a nickel left in the slot.

After completing her assessment, Morrow leans back in her chair, her features receding. Since we are abiding by Palm Springs etiquette, I feel it's appropriate to ask if she has had cosmetic surgery herself. She admits to using Retin-A as religiously as toothpaste.

Later, 3an Curran -- a society woman who doubles as a society writer for the local newspaper, the Desert Sun -- warns me that certain rules apply to such questions in the desert. It's not that people are likely to lie; sometimes they just lose track. "When someone says 'I haven't had any work, maybe she means she hasn't had any today," says Curran.

In matters of truth and beauty, she advises, "You have to be real specific."

I am having lunch with 3o-Ann Forbes, a 47-year-old businesswoman had a face-lift six years ago, and an eyelid lift last summer. Suddenly, Forbes lays down her fork and extends her arms over the table, as if leading a seance. Studying her freckled arms, she announces that maybe she'll have her arms and legs peeled next. "And I think I'd like to do something with my chin after that," she says, cupping her small knob of a chin in her palm.

Seeing nothing obviously arniss with her chin, I ask if she is thinking of augmentation or red uction.

She looks stumped. "I don't know. What do you think I need?"

In certain circles nearly every woman has had plastic surgery, says Jan Curran. No one takes much trouble to hide it. Women even arrive at parties with fresh stitches showing.

"They all get their faces done in the summer so they'll heal by the time the season starts," she says. "Sorne have it done every two years. One gal told me it's like keeping your car in shape.

"I went to a tea at the Youth Center, and I was talking to one of the members, who happens to be a very prominent figure in Palm Springs society. I asked who the new center members were. And she said, 'I'm not new, but I have a new face. Does that count?"'

Curran says the beauty doctors do whatever it takes to infiltrate high society -- where all the face-lift action is. The surgeons give grand soirees: Vincent Forshan's '60s party, complete with strawberry fields and competing rock bands, was party of the year in 1988. The doctors tirelessly attend charity events: Reza Mazaheri brought in $7,000 in a March of Dimes "bidding for bachelors" auction.

Such tactics are successful, Curran says, because wornen get their plastic surgeon referrals at parties and from hair stylists -- not from the local medical society. "Women go to the guy with the biggest ad in the magazine. The one with the nicest Rolls-Royce," Curran says. "They don't talk about the quality of a surgeon's work, they talk about the price. 'Aren't you going to say anything about my new face? It cost me $30,000.' Things like that. It's sort of a hero's badge."

HI my name is Gary Remes and I'll be your massage therapist today When Remes introduces himself to a client, he looks for the telltale scar over a woman's eyes when she blinks. He does this to determine if she has had plastic surgery, so that he won't inadvertently hurt her. He doesn't want to knead a knot that may turn out to be, say, a buttock implant.

"Do you have any areas that are bothering you?" he'll ask. If the client still doesn't take the hint, he adds: "Any injuries or illnesses that I should be aware ofP Any recent surgeries?"

Today, Remes has set up massage chairs in the lobby of the Spa Hotel in downtown Palm Springs. He is offering quickie $2 massages. I straddle a chair and mash my face against the hot vinyl doughnut designed to take the weight off a client's neck and shoulders.

"A woman carne in for a massage the other day," says Remes, a birdlike man with curly, slightly receding hair and a prominent nose. "When I got her on the table I saw she had had what's called a full coronal -- which involves cutting from the top of the head down to the ears so they can pull the whole scalp up. She had double breast lifts and silicon implants. And she also had her nipples relocated and a tummy tuck and a fanny lift. All at once. All she needed was two bolts in her neck and I could get her a husband with a flat head."

Folks like Remes are crucial to the smooth flow of cosmetic surgery traffic in this town. The doctors depend on everyone who works in the beauty business to send them clients. But Remes is something of a wrench in the system, I find. He doesn't like what cosmetic surgery does to women.

"As a single, 37-year-old male, I don't find it attractive," Gary says, digging his thumbs into rny spine. "It's amazing how much scarring a woman will endure to get the right shape from the outside. It's gotten out of hand, as far as I'm concerned."

Remes tells me he once was giving a massage to a woman who had been on his table for an hour when he got the uneasy feeling she was staring at him. He maneuvered himself around by her head and saw that although her eyes were open, her eyeballs were darting around in the rapid eye movement of sleep.

Says Remes, "She had had eyelid surgery and something went wrong and she couldn't close her eyelids."

After the broiling desert outside, it's luxuriously cool and in Vincent Forshan's waiting room. The opulent decor includes big dramatic blocks of red and blue -- deep, oxygen-rich colors. A massive bronze Buddha, imported from Asia, fills one corner. Adopting the critical eye of a desert resident, I decide the statue could use a boob reduction and a tummy tuck.

The symbols of wealth and power work their magic, and by the time Forshan's secretary ushers me through the waiting room door into the inner labyrinth, I'm feeling a little intimidated -- the Cowardly Lion going to meet the Wizard of Oz. Depositing me in Forshan's office, the secretary shuts the heavy door, leaving me alone with a silent figure sitting with his back turned toward me. Forshan is studying strips of bright desert sand through the slats of dark blue blinds.

When he swivels to face me, the aura of intimidation dissolves. The wizard turns out to be an average-looking guy, dressed in tan slacks and a tan pinstriped shirt. He looks like a friendly, slightly nerdy high school kid.

Forshan speaks: "There is an elite group of surgeons here, like the Green Berets or Delta Force. People will travel any distance, pay any tariff for the right man. Patients find us through the cosmetic underground. They know the bottom line." The doctor holds up both hands in front of his face and wiggles all 10 fingers, regarding me gravely.

The pressure to make his patients beautiful weighs on Forshan. Referring to his high-backed office chair, he says: "Sitting in this seat is like climbing into the cockpit of an F-16." The doctor, whose father was a Marine at Iwo Jima, frequently speaks in military metaphors. "A lot of guys would be pulling the rip cord."

Forshan ejects from his cockpit to show me the working heart of his kingdom: the private operating room. Most of the "Delta Force" plastic surgeons in town have them -- but none as fantastic as this. He feels for the light panel, flips a switch, and light ricochets off the expanse of gleaming white tile, smoked Lucite doors and shiny machinery. During the busy season, Forshan might average three cases a day in here. One day he'll do a face lift and a breast augmentation, the next a few smaller jobs: a brow lift, liposuction, cheek implants.It's arduous but lucrative work. Forshan takes home about a half-million a year; he charges between $6,500 and $8,500 for a face-lift, while the national average, according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, is about $3,900.

Basking in the glare of his spotless laboratory, Forshan says: "I'm an agent. I've been chosen. I've been sent to do this work."

It's been only a few decades since the first plastic surgeon over the pass linking Los Angeles to the desert to set up shop. But the magic combination of vanity, excess money and baggy flesh has produced a beauty-doctor boom and a glut of surgeons. The resulting competition makes for entertaining squabbles and noisy turf battles.

The most public war in recent times erupted in the early 1980s, when Borko Djordjevic and M. Reza Mazaheri tangled over who "did" former first lady Betty Ford. According to Mazaheri, Djordjevic had claimed responsibility -- although Mazaheri performed Ford's face-lift, in 1978. Mazaheri also said Djordjevic told patients he'd repaired Mazaheri's surgical blunders. The tiff ended after Djordjevic denied making either claim,

I call Djordjevic, but he's left town after a gossip-inspiring divorce from a wealthy heiress. Mazaheri practices in a Palm Springs office that resembles a smoky bachelor's pad. Nearly every plastic surgeon I spoke to eventually confided to me that he or she is truly an artist, but only Reza Mazaheri overwhelms his patients with evidence of his artistry. In the waiting room, in the halls, in the bathroom, in the recovery suite, hang paintings signed Mazaheri, M.D. A repeating motif: women who look like dark-haired Farrah Fawcetts, rendered in the brooding blues and purples of paintings on black velvet. The women's features are slightly twisted. One is weeping.

The doctor swoops down the hall to greet me, fairly bubbling with energy and mirth. He is a small, 57-year-old man, with cute little-boy features. I take notice of the button nose, having been told Mazaheri reconstructed it himself, looking in a mirror.

I ask him about the legendary rivalry with Djordjevic. Mazaheri says he understands how other doctors could be jealous of him and pick fights. "I would say I am one of the most successful plastic surgeons in the world," he says. Not only is he famous for his surgical prowess, he adds, but he's also a dynamo in real estate, movie making and publishing.

To give me a taste of just one of his many facets, he buzzes his secretary and asks her to bring his book, "Tips to the Secret of Youth and Beauty." "I'd like you to read it for yourself," he says, with his leprechaun smile. Once again, I feel I've been scrutinized and found wanting.

Jan Curran thumbs through her address book, past Richard past Clint Eastwood. She pauses at the name of Wanda Kaufman, a local socialite, and jots down her phone number.

Later, I dial Kaufman:

"I started when I was about 48. I got my eyes done then, and I've had a face-lift and several touch-ups. The last one I got because 3an Curran took a picture of me at a party and I noticed I had two chins, so I went right in and got my chin lifted."

Kaufman, who is 65, says she knows few men who have had plastic surgery. "Maybe some 70-year-olds married to 35-year-olds. But I don't know any women in my social circle who haven't had something done. Not one.

"You should start young," Kaufman advises. "There's no way they can get you back together after 65.

"How old are you?" she asks me.

"Thirty-seven. "

"Well, see. You haven't quite reached that point. "

Visiting the Gerard Alexandre beauty salon on a hot day is stepping into a cool pink seashell. The interior is all pink marble. Women in turbans float by, sipping iced tea . Alexandre himself is finishing up a blow dry on a client. Wearing tuxedo pants and a white shirt, he has a blond ponytail, small eyes and reddish-blond stubble on his cheeks. After the client slips out of the chair, Alexandre tells me he had his eyelids done two years ago by David Morrow. He flutters the pink lids for me to inspect.

The stylist says he cuts Morrow's hair, and that he and his staff refer clients to Morrow and other surgeons. Three to five clients a day ask him for referrals to plastic surgeons, he says. In return, the surgeons refer clients for hair styling and postoperative makeup. Makeup artist Julia Boyd shows me the pots of oil-based color she uses to cover fresh bruises. She's dressed in jeans, a vest and white cowboy boots; her own lipstick is smudged, a refreshing bit of imperfection. She moved to the desert three years ago from the Midwest, she says, and is still getting used to the notion that almost everyone she meets over age 40 has had cosmetic surgery. Back in Ohio, where she worked in a basket factory, she knew only one person who'd had work -- the factory owner.

"Not to sound naive, but I'd never seen anyone with breast implants," she says.

"I can't imagine anyone talking me into having plastic surgery," Boyd adds. "But one lady said to me, 'You're only 37. How are you going to feel when you're 50?'"

Before I step back out into the swelter, we stand there for a moment without speaking. Two 37-year-olds, contemplating the inexorable forces of time and hype driving women all over America under the red eye of the laser.

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