cover story
Cosmetic Shift
Shed of its stigma, cosmetic surgery now offers a smorgasbord of targeted procedures — some even covered by insurance, if you know the right doc. By Jimmy Magahern (Special to Lovin’ Life After 50)
At times, tooling around Wickenburg with a face and figure she’s invested thousands of dollars into maintaining, Jean Tazioli can feel like a glamorous Lisa Douglas trying to adapt to Hooterville in Green Acres – with all of the other like-aged women around town playing versions of dowdy handywoman Ralph Monroe. “I’m really displaced up here,” admits Tazioli, who, at 72, says she’s often mistaken for being about 20 years younger, thanks to a combination of liposuction, Botox, Juvéderm and eyelid surgery she’s had performed over the past six years. “There’s nothing wrong with the women in Wickenburg; they’re very healthy. But,” she hesitates, “they all wear ponytails, you know what I mean? They’re all horseback riding or they’re in their Polaris ATVs going across the desert. I mean, this is a very outdoorsy town. I’m more of a Scottsdale woman that’s living in Wickenburg.” Tazioli, a Chicagoan for her first 55 years who now has 15 horses herself on the 18-acre ranch she shares
with partner Lew Sowards, says she sometimes catches a little side-eye shade from the other women in town. “They’ll say, ‘Oh gee, you spend so much money on your appearance,’” she says. “I just smile and say, ‘Honey, if you can’t justify spending money on yourself, there’s something wrong.’ People spend money putting in a new roof or windows on their house. This is just more maintenance – only you’re doing it on yourself !” Tazioli’s openness toward cosmetic surgery reflects a nationwide shift that has boosted not only the amounts of elective surgeries and procedures being performed each year, but also the types of procedures patients are choosing. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), overall procedures have risen 115 percent since 2000, but surgeons are also seeing more variety in the areas of the body patients are choosing to address. While facelifts remain a popular option among patients, there’s also been considerable growth in buttock implants (up 252 percent since 2000), lower body lifts
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(up 3,973 percent) and upper arm lifts (up 4,959 percent). Particularly popular among the 55-and-older set are Botox, or Botulinum Type A toxin injections; bariatric or weight loss surgery and varicose vein treatments. “Over the last ten years, it’s gotten more socially acceptable to have cosmetic surgery,” says Todd Case, M.D., medical director at Profiles Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Care in Tucson. “There used to be a stigma around just having cosmetic surgery done – nobody wanted anyone to know about it. Now everybody’s like, ‘Hey, look what I had done!’” The demand for a wider variety of procedures that allows patients to focus on specific target areas of the body they want to improve has pushed surgeons to expand beyond their specialties to include more options. “I do a ton of eyelid surgery, or blepharoplasty,” says Emilio Justo, M.D., the surgeon who performed all of Tazioli’s work and the founder of the Arizona Eye Institute and Cosmetic Laser Center, which has offices in Sun
(Special to Lovin’ Life After 50)
Dr. Emilio Justo specializes in eyelid surgery.
City, Sun City West and Wickenburg. “But over the last 20 years, I’ve expanded into other forms of cosmetic surgery to include liposuction, endoscopic brow lifts, face lifts and then a whole host of non-surgical procedures – from the
Cosmetic ...continued on page 13 www.lovinlifeafter50.com