A crowd of young women wait nervously in the lobby of a popular plastic surgery clinic in Apgujeong, the affluent neighborhood at the heart of Gangnam. Photographs of Korean pop singers and actresses line the walls, winsome customers who smile next to their cosmetic surgeons. “It’s painful, but I really want a face like those Korean actress girls,” says a Chinese patient leaving a check-up – with her nose wrapped in a surgical bandage. Many customers have traveled to this neighborhood – home to some 400 cosmetic surgery hospitals – all the way from China, Japan and Southeast Asia. They’re…
Author: Owen Chandler
The “selfie” culture on social media appears to be intensifying people’s desires to undergo cosmetic procedures, a new study suggests. Time spent on Snapchat or Instagram seems to heighten a person’s interest in such procedures, researchers found. This was particularly true if folks used filters and photo-editing applications to alter the personal pictures they posted. “While there are many factors that likely contribute to this, social media usage did likely increase the desire, amongst a subset of patients, to seek cosmetic procedures,” concluded the research team led by senior researcher Dr. Neelam Vashi, an associate professor of dermatology at the Boston…