Will My Surgeon Talk About Me on TikTok?

Dr. Chang (00:04):
You are listening to Secret Services where we discuss the procedures nobody admits to, but everyone's curious about. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Chang. All right, we're back. Jackie, good to see you.

Jackie (00:17):
Good to see you.

Dr. Chang (00:17):
How was your trip?

Jackie (00:19):
Oh, I just got back from Aruba. It was amazing.

Dr. Chang (00:21):
Oh, weather was good?

Jackie (00:23):
Perfect.

Dr. Chang (00:24):
And no travel bumps or hiccups?

Jackie (00:27):
Honestly, no. It was a long day of travel yesterday, but no cancellations, nothing. It was kind of shocking. So you do customs in Aruba. It was literally the two of us. It was kind of comical.

Dr. Chang (00:41):
Really?

Jackie (00:42):
It was a huge room. No one else was in line.

Dr. Chang (00:45):
But aren't the tourists other tourists going through there?

Jackie (00:49):
Perhaps the people that were on our bus weren't going back to America or maybe they were getting snacks before us, but it was just us in this huge room.

Dr. Chang (00:58):
Did you see any famous people?

Jackie (01:00):
No famous people. A lot of BBLs.

Dr. Chang (01:04):
Oh yeah. You texted me something about that where-

Jackie (01:08):
Lot of-

Dr. Chang (01:08):
Your boyfriend wasn't sure and you were like, "Yeah, that's obviously a BBL."

Jackie (01:12):
Yeah. I was honestly kind of shook. The amount of BBLs we saw, and he'd be like, "I wouldn't have known that. " I'm like, "What?"

Dr. Chang (01:20):
Maybe he's just not that observant about those kind of things. Maybe he's not a butt man. I don't know.

Jackie (01:26):
Probably not.

Dr. Chang (01:27):
So the reason I was asking you about celebrities was because there's been a lot of celebrity talking plastic surgery lately.

Jackie (01:34):
A lot of celebs. And Dr. Chang, be honest, do you watch the other doctors do the celebrity face breakdowns on social media?

Dr. Chang (01:43):
Absolutely. I mean, I guess we've talked about it a little bit here, but we haven't done that really on other social media platforms that much. It just seems like you're guessing a little bit, but I do watch other people do it a lot. They often will have a floating head in front of a picture of their favorite celebrity.

Jackie (02:05):
Or least favorite.

Dr. Chang (02:06):
Or least favorite. It's just hard. It's hard to judge people without knowing the story. And the other thing is that the pictures are so variable. Did you just see this picture of Olivia Wilde?

Jackie (02:19):
I was just about to say that.

Dr. Chang (02:22):
Olivia Wilde is very beautiful, kind of exotic looking though. She has very distinctive eyes

Jackie (02:29):
And- Yeah, it's her eyes.

Dr. Chang (02:30):
And cheekbones. She's very chiseled, but I think she's lost a little weight lately.

Jackie (02:36):
Yeah.

Dr. Chang (02:37):
And then she got totally slammed for this ridiculous-

Jackie (02:43):
They destroyed her with that photo.

Dr. Chang (02:44):
Fish eye picture and there's all these memes of Gollum from the Hobbit.

Jackie (02:51):
Well, did you see-

Dr. Chang (02:52):
And her eyes bugging out of her face.

Jackie (02:54):
Did you see her poking fun about herself on her Instagram story?

Dr. Chang (02:58):
Yes. Well, you know I did because we have the same algorithm. So I think she's laying around under a blanketed on the couch. She was just joking around. She's like, "It's a fish eye lens." She seemed good spirited about it.

Jackie (03:14):
She was. She said her brother sent her the Gollum meme. I mean, okay, I'll be honest, but it's so easy to do a quick judge on social media because I mean, of course I was doing the same thing. I'm always on Twitter. I'm scrolling Twitter and I saw that photo and I was like, "Oh my God, she looks horrible." And of course my first thought is Harry Styles just got engaged to Zoe Kravitz and she's devastated and now she's emaciated and looks crazy. That was my first thought because she's sad.

Dr. Chang (03:45):
Okay. You got to kind of go another layer for me. So Harry Styles, because Harry Styles was with Olivia Wilde. Is that right?

Jackie (03:50):
Oh my gosh. So when they made that movie, and I'm totally blanking on the name of the movie, it was like a year or two ago, she was cheating on Jason Sudeikis with Harry Styles.

Dr. Chang (04:01):
Okay. I was just about to ask about Jason Sudeikis. Okay. Go back.

Jackie (04:07):
Then it was like this whole drama. During the press tour, Jason Sudeikis literally served Olivia Wilde with divorce papers in front of everyone. And then obviously things didn't work out with her and Harry Styles.

Dr. Chang (04:21):
Gentlemen, this is just proof that women remember everything.

Jackie (04:24):
Everything.

Dr. Chang (04:24):
Look at the precision, what Jackie is recalling just drama. They are precise. Okay, continue.

Jackie (04:32):
But yeah, so I thought, well, she just saw that giant rock on Zoe Kravitz's finger and she's devastated. I was like, maybe she was on Ozempic and then this happened and now she's just like five pounds. But yeah, maybe it was just bad photo fish islands she said.

Dr. Chang (04:51):
Well, but then she was just at the Met Gala last night.

Jackie (04:58):
And still looked a little crazy.

Dr. Chang (04:59):
And looked a little thin.

Jackie (05:01):
Did look a little thin. Yeah.

Dr. Chang (05:02):
Didn't look great in certain angles. Again, these celebrities have crazy standards. She's beautiful. But when you have 50 photographers taking pictures of you at a hundred a second that they're firing out, you're going to find some that are not great angles.

Jackie (05:22):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many selfies you're taking Dr. Chang, but I mean-

Dr. Chang (05:26):
Not that many.

Jackie (05:27):
But I could be sitting here and take 20 photos of myself and I would literally look different in all of them. So yeah, it's tough with these surgeons breaking everything down because it's like you're basing it off of one photo. We don't even know, is that even what they even really look like? Right. Was it a filtered photo? What angle was it taken from? Also, I would say Olivia Wilde perhaps shouldn't wear that much eye makeup that she had in the one photo. She had a very smoky eye. I don't think that was helping her looking so gaunt.

Dr. Chang (06:04):
Yeah. I mean, the flip side of that though is if you see something that you dislike in a photo consistently like under eyebags or facial volume loss or a bump on your nose, then that's okay if that's what you want to change or treat or improve, that's the thing. But I think to say, "Oh, well, you look so bad based on this one photo," that's the difference, I think.

Jackie (06:34):
Well, and one thing is if you're analyzing your own self like, "Okay, I have this hump in my nose every single time." That's different than the general population just seeing one photo of someone and being like, "All right, well, they need to change this immediately."

Dr. Chang (06:49):
Yeah. I think a lot of people really do dive into the celebrity stuff just because it's so interesting to the public.

Jackie (06:58):
It's so funny because I, of course, as soon as I saw her on the red carpet, I did have the same thought. I was like, "Well, she does still look a little skinny." But then yeah, they turned her around and she has this basket on her butt and I was like ...

Dr. Chang (07:15):
I don't understand the theme of the Met Gala. It was this thing about fashion and art.

Jackie (07:22):
Fashion and art, which made me laugh because I was like, "Is that not really the goal every time?"

Dr. Chang (07:28):
Yeah. Isn't it always called fashion and art and stuff like that?

Jackie (07:32):
Yeah. I mean, there's always a theme, but I'm like, art and fashion, that's kind of what the whole point is always right.

Dr. Chang (07:38):
It's kind of strange to just basically say that it's just got to be as weird as possible and that means it's art. I'm not sure what they're going for.

Jackie (07:47):
Yeah. I feel like they just want to be as outrageous as possible.

Dr. Chang (07:51):
Right. To get commentary essentially.

Jackie (07:54):
Yeah. I definitely think the Met Gal is one of those any publicity is good publicity situations.

Dr. Chang (08:01):
One of my patients was here yesterday and was like, "Oh, I'm going up to the Met Gal." I was like, "Well, you're flying up to them. You don't have much time." And didn't want to get filler dissolved in the under eye area because she was worried she'd have some bruising for the Met Gala. I said, "That would've been great published." Be like, "Oh, I just had my filler dissolved. I have a little bruising."

Jackie (08:18):
That could have been her art, her art on her face.

Dr. Chang (08:22):
Yeah. As an aside, we didn't put that filler in by the way, so we're just fixing just a disclaimer. She's prepping her for an upcoming surgery.

Jackie (08:35):
We do have an anonymous patient question, okay?

Dr. Chang (08:37):
Yes.

Jackie (08:39):
I've been watching these TikToks where doctors analyze what celebrities have had done. My own surgeon actually has one of these accounts. Should I be worried they might talk about my results somewhere online?

Dr. Chang (08:51):
I guess to answer that question, you have to think about, okay, what's the doctor like? Are they sharing all these patients' results? Have you given permission to talk about your surgery or procedures? And it might be a good thing. Maybe they're going to be very excited and say, "Hey, look at how great this patient of mine did," and they might be very happy about it. The other part of it is are you a celebrity? Are you a person whose outcome will really matter to them in terms of their ability to sort of discuss the-

Jackie (09:22):
Well, that was going to be my question. Do you see a lot of accounts of people that are analyzing work that is not a celebrity?

Dr. Chang (09:31):
Not really.

Jackie (09:32):
Yeah, not often. Unless it's something like a crazy botched situation, like something very outrageous. But I would say I don't know that I really come across surgeons just analyzing their average breast aug, tummy tuck patient.

Dr. Chang (09:50):
Yeah. I think smart surgeons are humble surgeons. They understand that complications and risks and things that are not great outcomes can happen to any surgeon that does enough operating. If you don't operate, then yeah, maybe you have a very low complication, but you also have zero experience and zero record of consistency. So I think that anybody who is understanding reasonable and humble and has a degree of respect for how hard it is that what we do would understand that criticizing other people's work does get a little risky. So you have to have a little bit of introspection and understand what-

Jackie (10:39):
You're not God. So there's always, despite what many surgeons think bad outcomes can happen to everyone. So I think, yeah, you're-

Dr. Chang (10:49):
That statement is a funny statement because there are surgeons who will say that to patients too. Well, "Well, I'm not God. I'm not a magician." And patients will take that the wrong way too. That could be kind of insulting if you said that to a patient.

Jackie (11:04):
Right. Well, and sometimes we discuss stuff on this podcast. Where do you draw the line of what is acceptable to talk about?

Dr. Chang (11:14):
I think we talk a lot about disclaimers of what we do, we don't know a lot of these things. I think you have to take everything with a grain of salt and you have to sort of respect what the patient's going through, the celebrities going through. They're just a regular person, even though what they do for a living does bring them a lot of fame and publicity, but patients, they're human. They have insecurities, everybody has similar goals. We all have culturally very similar beauty ideals and ideas. Some of the things we've talked about celebrity-wise are that they have an influence that non-celebrity patients don't have. So sometimes it's hard to say no. We just saw the Michael, you saw the Michael Jackson movie did I tell you I saw it this week?

Jackie (12:00):
No, you did?

Dr. Chang (12:01):
Oh, it's so good.

Jackie (12:01):
It's so good.

Dr. Chang (12:02):
It's so good. But you realize people couldn't tell Michael Jackson, no, he bought a freaking giraffe and he's living at his parents' house. If I brought a giraffe home when I was living in my parents' house, they would have been like, "What are you crazy? They would have kicked me out. " Or he brought open a chimp and Bubbles is living with him in that. So even his own parents couldn't tell him no. And then he gets some facial surgery in the movi. The doctor can't tell him no when he's a worldwide celebrity or it's going to be very, very challenging. You got to find the right doctor. And over time, if you really want to do something, even if you found the doctors that say no, you'll find the doctor that says yes.

Jackie (12:49):
Someone's going to do it for these people. So do you ever find it useful to discuss these celebrity procedures, things they've had done?

Dr. Chang (13:00):
Well, actually the most useful thing that just happened recently was there's this huge blow up about Kris Jenner and her facelift and being unhappy with her results.

Jackie (13:11):
Yes. And she came out clearing the air.

Dr. Chang (13:14):
Right. But what I think is useful is, so for those who don't know, Kris Jenner had a very, very famous facelift done about a year ago. She came out and talked about the experience, talked about how much she left her surgeon. She had a wonderful, I guess, birthday party with maybe it was her 70th birthday party or something like that. And she just looked fabulous and everybody was saying how great it was. And there was a comment just maybe a few months ago, so maybe seven, eight, maybe in 12 months postoperatively that she was upset and raging about-

Jackie (13:55):
Furious.

Dr. Chang (13:56):
Her facelift starting to droop or starting to settle. So getting back to your question, I think it's useful to have ... First of all, that's been debunked because she's sort of cleared the air, but I think it's useful to talk to patients and say, "This is not abnormal. This is part of the healing process where your body will relax a little bit and your results will be changing over the course of the first year or so. And as your body heals, we'll see where everything settles up, but it won't be as tight as it was that first month and you won't have the benefit of the swelling, making sure all the wrinkles are gone. Some that swelling will go away." And these are normal parts of the recovery process. And so I think it helps to set patient's expectations when they see things like that.

Jackie (14:45):
It kind of opens up the conversation for you all.

Dr. Chang (14:47):
Yeah. She's not botched or anything. She looks great still. And also-

Jackie (14:51):
I know. I mean, she's what?

Dr. Chang (14:54):
70 something.

Jackie (14:55):
71. She looks amazing.

Dr. Chang (14:57):
Well, that and also the fact that she's come out and validated her procedure, her surgeon, her feelings also tells patients it's okay. Other people freak out or get nervous and as long as you stay grounded, really, she's very happy. It's worthwhile.

Jackie (15:17):
Right. And also it's like the article or photos I kept seeing when they were like, Kris Jenner is furious. She was walking down the street, not all done up. I mean, we always see the Kardashians done up to a T and when she debuted it, it was at her celebrity filled 70th birthday. She's looking her best possible. And then they're all saying, "Oh, she's not happy now because here's a picture of her walking down the street." She might not have even had makeup on. You know what I mean?

Dr. Chang (15:45):
Right. Well, so that leads into actually again from a celebrity Hollywood thing was the Denise Richards facelift and makeover, that was a very impressive surgery as well. But at least in my world, I saw surgeons bickering and kind of nitpicking about each other about the results. And this one guy in Miami, I forgot his name, he was stirring the pot like crazy. Now he's spending his time making these posts, defending his position, clapping back and arguing back with other doctors who are stitching his posts about who can call himself a plastic surgeon, who's an expert in facial surgery and what he thinks is good or not so good about Denise Richard's facelift. And it's really silly how these everybody uses these platforms to kind of prop themselves up as an expert, but unnecessarily tear other people down or criticize people. I think it's just really kind of low brow and not very helpful to be fighting online.

Jackie (16:56):
Right. Yeah. And personally, as a patient looking for a surgeon, I don't want my surgeon to just be arguing with random strangers on the internet.

Dr. Chang (17:06):
Well, I mean, this is the problem we have in surgery and medicine in general is a sort of like, I'm right, let me talk louder over you. So at conferences, for instance, let's say there's a deep plane surgeon and a SMAS surgeon and they would argue and argue about, "Oh, well, my technique is better." Or an open rhinoplasty surgeon and a closed rhinoplasty surgeon, they would argue and argue and argue about, "Oh, my way's better. Oh, this is crazy. Your results don't look..." So there is a little bit of that posturing and ego and debate that goes on in our professional circles, but that doesn't necessarily translate well, in my opinion, to the public.

Jackie (17:46):
Right. I would agree with that. So the New York Times had that piece when Stars Plastic Surgery is played for your entertainment arguing that TikTok and Instagram accounts run by actual doctors and scrubs are essentially a new credentialed form of judging women's looks. What'd you think about that article?

Dr. Chang (18:04):
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I would love to dig into it and then analyze it, but they make it difficult to sort of get the whole article or you have to pay for it and I get it nobody's subscribing anymore. But anyway, it is an interesting commentary. I don't think of it as a way of judging women's looks. I just think there is interest in women's beauty, just like there is in their whole lives, celebrity lives.

Jackie (18:34):
I was going to say, yeah, I think the article emphasizes a lot of this is judging women's looks, but I also think, well, in general, there's more celebrity women getting plastic surgery. Of course, there are men who do it, but I think there's just more content out there of women getting these procedures done or women being more open about it as well. I think we've talked about Bradley Cooper, everyone's talking about Adam Levine now, but Jim Carey, they haven't openly come out and admitted. I think the women are more open about having procedures. So that could also be why this author is saying a disparity in that as well.

Dr. Chang (19:17):
Right. Yeah. I don't think about it as a gender issue. I think of it as more of a social commentary of people being really interested in plastic surgery, anti-aging and beauty trends, and because of social media, because of the exposure, that becomes a lot more in depth and people really, really want to know, well, should I do this or how much money does this cost or who's good and who's not so good or what are the things that I should worry about? Although I will tell you, so we recently had your friend, Leslie, who was a makeup artist at CNN, right? She was here helping us for our-

Jackie (20:03):
Yeah, our photo shoot.

Dr. Chang (20:05):
Our photo shoot, which is going to be launched out for our new website.

Jackie (20:09):
Coming soon.

Dr. Chang (20:10):
Yeah. We look good, real good.

Jackie (20:12):
We do.

Dr. Chang (20:13):
But she works for a very popular TV network and a lot of news anchors and stuff like that. And so she was saying that very often they will come and have had a procedure done or try to get back to work with some swelling or bruising and they're constantly covering these things up. So I think that it happens a lot, especially in those people that are on camera who are very visible. When you see yourself a lot, you're going to notice all the minutia and all the things that are signs of aging and change that you may not have liked before. And so I think it's everywhere. Some people are a little more open about it. People get rewarded financially for sharing, right? So if you got a lot of followers or you get a lot of engagement, you actually monetize that on these platforms. So there's value to being transparent, which obviously helps us demystify the process of what we do.

Jackie (21:14):
Well, guys, let us know what you think about this. How do you feel about all these surgeons making all these little comments about everything? Give us a comment. Let's have a conversation about it and we'll see you next week, right?

Dr. Chang (21:27):
All right. We'll see you then.

Jackie (21:28):
Thanks.

Dr. Chang (21:30):
Thanks for listening to Secret Services, the podcast where we see everything and say nothing except right here. I'm Dr. Christopher Chang, double board certified plastic surgeon located in Tysons, Virginia. Follow us on TikTok @CongressionalPsurgery or on Instagram @congressionalplasticsurgery. To send us a classified message or to hear more episodes, go to secretservicespodcast.com. Links to everything we talked about on today's show are available in the show notes. Oops, patient's here. We got to go.