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Recently in Salon Health & Body

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One company was selling a power cannula, which surgeons can use to plunge through fibrous tissue. "This is a real aggressive one," said a salesman named John. He gave me the power cannula to hold and showed me how to rev it. RHEEEE! screamed the cannula, sounding very much like a dentist's drill. Then John handed me a potato. "Stick it into the potato," he urged me. "Stick it in, and feel the resistance! Feel what it feels like. Stick it in."

This is not the sort of thing a lady does to a potato she's just met. I handed it back. "You stick it in."

Growing tired of gadgets, I moved on to the softer, kinder world of plastic surgery underwear. To my great disappointment, no produce had been recruited to serve as models. They were displayed in unflattering heaps: gynecomastia vests for male breast liposuctions, subpectoral implant stabilizer bras, compression girdles. My favorite was a product called Pic-Eze.

Guess what Pic-Eze is. Wrong, and wrong again. It's disposable thong underwear in surgical-blue nylon that patients wear for their Before and After liposuction photos. Why? For it Offers Patient Modesty with Maximum Photographic Exposure, that's why. Pic seemed an unfortunate naming word for a class of product that creates a desire to do just that. The man explained that Pic is short for picture, and has nothing to do with wedgies. Then he gave me a sample, which I need like a banana needs an eyebrow.

The rest of the afternoon was passed pleasantly, perusing the many wondrous and never-before-known-of ways that human beings have found to make a living. Someone, for example, invented Eyelid Weights. These are tiny skin-tone curved metal bars that are glued to an eyelid to create, as they say, gravity-assisted closure. For those with permanent gravity-closure needs, there are solid Gold Eyelid Implants. These are quite beautiful and I found myself wanting one as a souvenir, but what with the panties and a pair of SiliMed breast-implant wrist rests, I knew I shouldn't be greedy.

I continued my tour of little-known plastic-surgery-offshoot industries. Someone is paying the mortgage by manufacturing plastic teaching models of human skin ("relief detail displays acne pustule ..."). Someone else is putting the children through college on the proceeds from pneumatic hair transplanters. Whole worlds exist out there that most of us know nothing of. This is why I love a plastic surgery product exhibition. It is truly eye-opening, though not, thank God, permanently.
salon.com | August 13, 1999

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