Promoting Plastic Surgery, Party-Style

JAIMY LYNN COHEN, a 48-year-old violinist from Bellmore, patted her hips. “I’ve got these lumps that are happening over here,” she said to Dr. Scott E. Newman, a plastic surgeon. “Is there anything you can do for me?”
The physician invited Ms. Cohen for a consultation in his makeshift office: a table with a mirror on top and platters of Hershey’s Kisses. It was set up in the middle of a bazaar of pampering services at a “Girls Night Out” exposition at a dance studio here.
Without having her undress — he hadn’t brought along a screen, he said — the doctor quickly suggested liposuction as a way for Ms. Cohen to “spot reduce.”
The five-minute consultation was one of about 40 Dr. Newman gave on a recent evening as groups of women perused his album of “before” and “after” photographs while he explained breast augmentation options. Some signed up for free “demonstration” shots of Botox to smooth furrowed brows and injections of Restylane and Perlane to fill in facial lines.
The event, which Dr. Newman sponsored, was billed as an “evening of indulgence” that included wine, chips and dips, and 53 vendors selling purses, baubles and lingerie.
The 200 women who attended, paying $50 to enter, could also choose from a carnival of options. Psychics read their fortunes, a “happiness coach” dispensed advice, skin artists drew temporary henna tattoos, and reflexologists gave foot baths.
In the competitive, lucrative cosmetic surgery market, a few of the Island’s more than 80 cosmetic surgeons are turning to elaborate soirees to beef up their client lists and stand out among the crowd of anti-aging specialists.
“In this day and age, doctors market,” Dr. Newman said.
On the same evening as the Glen Head event, Dr. Stephen T. Greenberg, a Woodbury-based plastic surgeon, hosted a “cosmetic surgery fashion show” at the Carlyle on the Green, a catering facility in Bethpage State Park, using 10 of his recent patients, ages 22 to 51, as models.
The event attracted about 200 people, mostly women, paying $20 apiece; it cost about $12,000. Dr. Greenberg described it as “like a bar mitzvah.” It had an open bar, a disc jockey and performers on stilts during cocktail hour. The dinner buffet included carving, pasta and dim sum stations.
The goal was to create “a fun night, an educational night” that “demystifies” cosmetic surgery, Dr. Greenberg said. In front of the audience, he asked a 28-year-old patient named Jennifer, who later identified herself as his front desk manager and would not disclose her last name, what had bothered her about her breasts and whether the procedure she had undergone to enlarge them had been painful. Meanwhile, Leeana Karlson, co-host of Dr. Greenberg’s show on KJOY radio, 98.3 FM, showed the crowd silicone gel implants like those the surgeon had used.
Dr. Alan H. Gold, a Great Neck-based plastic surgeon and president of the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said such events “have moved plastic surgery from an art and science to entertainment.”
“It is certainly not the norm of what we would consider appropriate promotion of a surgical practice,” he said. “But there is no ability to mandate good taste.”
Dr. Greenberg said that after years of promotion and advertising, he had “more patients than I could ever want to operate on.” Still, he said, the event would lure new patients that he “may not have had otherwise.”
Many of the guests “want to meet me,” he said, because of his two-hour weekly radio show, “Nip/Tuck Saturday Night.”
As the music throbbed, Marilyn Knapp, 36, a massage therapist from Deer Park, strutted down the runway in a halter-top cocktail dress, flaunting her newly reduced and lifted breasts, flatter stomach and liposuctioned chin from procedures Dr. Greenberg had performed in March.
Ms. Knapp said she was “honored” when Dr. Greenberg asked her to be in the show because her body “was recovering so well.”
Dr. Greenberg said he didn’t offer Botox or other injections in nonmedical settings. But he mingled with potential new patients, like Shureta Povataj, 35, of the Bronx, who had come to meet him and to ask his patients if they were happy with their outcomes. She was relieved when Dr. Greenberg told her not to worry about the cellulite on the back of her legs and amenable to his suggestion that she come to his office to discuss the nose job she was considering.
Dr. Greenberg has conducted promotions at nightclubs, country clubs and educational facilities, according to Todd Shapiro, his publicist.
Yes, publicist. Mr. Shapiro said he is paid $3,000 a month to boost Dr. Greenberg’s media coverage.
Dr. Newman, 47, also has a publicist, Lucy Rosen, who said she earns $5,000 a month. At her suggestion, Dr. Newman has been making the rounds of networking events since he opened an office in Garden City in April.
“It is a matter of being visible in the community” and dispensing information, said Dr. Newman, who offers limousine service to his ambulatory surgery center in Yonkers.
As women crowded around, Dr. Newman cited one advantage of the party format. “A lot of people are afraid to come to a plastic surgeon’s office,” he said.

Source: surgery news