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| Dr. Joel Aronowitz |
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “Okay, Sandhya, what age is too young to have plastic surgery? And warning, warning, this is a trick question, because there's no age that's too young. I'm taking care of newborn infants. But really the question is, what age is too young to have elective cosmetic surgery?”
Sandhya “Under 18?”
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “I would say there's not an age. So, you have a small child that has protruding ears that goes to school and is getting, you know, Dumbo comments and feels terrible, etc. The ears by age six are roughly 80, 85 percent of an adult size already. So, it's safe to operate on those ears. You're not going to interfere with healing too much. And you're going to save that child a lot of emotional pain and stress. So, it's okay to operate on a small child at that age for something like that. But let's say you have somebody who's unhappy with their nose or unhappy with the size of their breasts or unhappy with something purely, more purely cosmetic. What age? In my opinion, it depends on the individual. So there are things that are in between. For example, a breast reduction. There are some people at age 14 or 15 that a woman or a girl that age should be a candidate for a breast reduction because her breasts are so large and it's physically affecting her and not only physically, but at school, socially, it's affecting her. And why put her through the grief if she's relatively mature and her parents are supportive? And it makes sense to the doctor. There there's no arbitrary difference, you know, one year or two years. I don't think that we should we should subject her to that pain of waiting for no reason other than her age. In my opinion, for other things like, for example, if a woman is is or a man wants to let's say liposuction of an otherwise normal area and just to fit in clothes better or whatever, I think 14 or 15 is way too young for that. Probably maybe 18 might be too young, depending on the individual. So it's a situational thing that should be evaluated. The individual should be evaluated by what they're requesting, how much sense it makes, what are the risks to that person because of their age? Is there some advantage to doing it earlier versus doing it later, etc.? What do you think? Have you known anybody who's had, you know, purely cosmetic like if you had a daughter who's 16 who had small breasts and wanted an augmentation, let's say for 16th birthday, would you let her have it? Is there any universe in which you'd let her have that?”
Sandhya: “I don't know. I guess it all depends on the situation, what we've learned here today.”
Dr. Joel Aronowitz: “See, this is why Sandhya is you're like, you're remarkable. You're great. You're great. I guess it does depend. So, I think I thought I got you there, but I think it does depend. So I think it really does depend. It's I don't think that not knowing the individual person and the overall situation, how it's affecting them, I don't think you can just decide. I think that it's the sort of thing that needs to happen in the consultation room and not as a you can't make a hard and fast rule.”
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