Appearances

I spent the better part of two days last week in plastic surgeons’ offices for a story: Spain, it seems, is home to more plastic surgeons who conduct more plastic surgery, than anywhere else in Europe. It was a very strange experience: the expensive modern art on the walls; the pretty assistants who all wear chic matching suits, like salesgirls at Zara; the patients who retreat to the waiting room clutching slightly bloodied ice packs to their face as they wait for the swelling to go down from their Botox shots. But the strangest of all was how normal everything came to seem, the groups of women sitting in chatty, happy groups making it seem like the decision to have a little taken off here, a little tightened there, is no more weighty a decision than what color polish to choose at the manicurist.