Columnist Susan Snyder: Industry faces rise in scrutiny

Friday, April 6, 2001 | 7:37 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

A nip here.

A tuck there.

A bit o' the bovine into the lips and voila!

You look moooovelous.

A report recently released by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery says the number of cosmetic procedures performed last year was 25 percent higher than in 1999.

And the 5.7 million operations represented a 173-percent jump on the number done in 1997.

Have we lost our minds? No, silly. We're losing our wrinkles, creases, bags and crinkles.

Botox injections were last year's No. 1 procedure, the report says. The substance -- botulinum toxoid -- was developed a few decades ago to treat neurological problems such as crossed eyes.

Nowadays it's injected as a temporary fix to hide telltale facial lines such as frown crevices between the eyebrows, crow's feet at the temples and crinklies around the edges of the mouth.

Call me a killjoy (or something worse), but I'm thinking I like those frownie lines.

They scream "way outta my 20s!" But they also say, "Look, Junior, I can -- and have -- become very angry in my life. So you can bet your smooth little forehead that I am not going to pay sticker price."

This is not to say cosmetic surgery is a bad thing. If you can pick your shoes, why can't you pick your nose?

See? Even jokes can age well.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to like what you see in the mirror. If it takes a tummy tuck, a collagen injection or liposuction to get there, go for it.

And baby boomers -- people born from 1946 to 1964 -- seem to be the ones going for it most. They made up about 78 percent of last year's cosmetic procedure seekers, the report says.

After Botox injections, the most popular treatments were chemical peels, microdermabrasions, collagen injections and sclerotherapy, which involves injecting varicose or spider veins with a blanching solution.

Hey, nobody said this stuff was fit for dinner talk.

Buttock lifts were at the bottom of the list, with lower body lifts, upper arm lifts, cheek implants and thigh lifts rounding out the least-popular five.

(Breast augmentation was No. 9. I know you were wondering.)

The report makes it pretty clear that those driving the cosmetic surgery market these days are middle- or near-middle-age adults who want to conquer the lines that betray their ages.

But I still think we're missing something. Just for grins, the next time you look in the mirror think of those little lines on your face as little lines on a map.

They show where you've been.

If the horizontal forehead lines are deeper than the frownie lines, maybe you've had more surprises than despair.

Crow's feet show you've laughed a lot. Those lines around your mouth come from decades of smiling.

You can pay a surgeon to wipe it all clean and start over. But why? There is merit in showing you've been there, done that and done it again.

Man's first steps on the moon, the first television, the first computer, the first integrated school, the first Earth Day.

No one needs to ask where we've been. It's written all over our faces.

Why not let it be?