Zoom era sees plastic surgeries boom in US
SITTING in the consultation room of a swanky cosmetic surgery clinic in Washington, Hudson Young removed his mask under the satisfied gaze of his doctor.
Like a growing number of Americans, Young decided the right time to undergo plastic surgery was in the middle of a pandemic.
He knew he would have time to recuperate in the privacy of his own home. And Young suddenly found himself face-to-face with his own image while participating in an increased amount of video calls.
“It’s something new when you have to stare at your face for a couple of hours a day and there’s only so much you can do with good lighting and good angles,” Young said.
Young, 52, already had been a fan of Botox injections but went under the scalpel for the first time in October. He had a lower face and neck lift, upper and lower eyelid surgery and laser resurfacing.
“You first discover that with Zoom when you see yourself and you’re like, ‘Oh, yikes!’” the trainee real estate agent explained, as Dr Michael Somenek examined his barely visible scars.
Young is far from the only one who has found themselves disappointed with the reflection they have seen in the webcam over the past year.
Virtual consultations for cosmetic procedures have risen 64 percent for surgeons in the United States since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which lists Botox injections, dermal fillers, breast augmentation and liposuction as among the most popular services.
“We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of surgical cosmetic procedures that people have been seeking directly related to Zoom,” said Somenek, who has seen a 50 to 60 percent increase.
“The number one procedure that people have been coming in for is either their upper eyelids or their neck. Because they
see (their neck) either hanging on the camera or looking like a double chin.”
“I think the pandemic in general has given everyone time to like, sit back and take care of those things that we’ve been pushing further and further along,” explained Ana Caceres, who was able to work from home after undergoing a plastic surgery operation she had wanted for a long time.
She recovered at her parents’ house outside Washington after a December breast reconstruction and lift that helped
her deal with a source of insecurity she has had since adolescence.
“I didn’t have to take off all this time, because I still was able to work from my bed with my laptop,” the 25-year-old said. “When life is going on and you have places to be, it’s so easy to push things along further and further,” Caceres said, sporting a top she says she now has the confidence to wear.
And she has scheduled arm liposuction for the end of this month.
Her surgeon, Dr Catherine Hannan,
says consultations at her clinic in the US capital have nearly doubled since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Our patients have more frown lines, because they’ve been so stressed for the last year,” she said.
And Hannan says a face or body change can have a psychological impact, too.
“This is a way that patients are saying, ‘I can’t travel, I can’t see my family, this is something I can do to make myself feel more confident right now.’”
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday lifted a freeze on green cards issued by his predecessor during the pandemic. Lawyers said the ban was blocking most legal immigration to the United States.
Former President Donald Trump last spring halted the issuance of green cards until the end of 2020 in the name of protecting the coronaviruswracked job market — a reason that Trump gave to achieve many of the cuts to legal immigration that had eluded him before the pandemic.
Trump on December 31 extended those orders until the end of March. He had deemed immigrants a “risk to the US labor market” and blocked their entry to the US in issuing Proclamation 10014 and Proclamation 10052.
Biden stated in his proclamation on Wednesday that shutting the door on legal immigrants “does not advance the interests of the United States.”
“To the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here. It also harms industries in the United States that utilize talent from around the world,” Biden stated in his proclamation.
Most immigrant visas were blocked by the executive orders, according to immigration lawyers.
As many as 120,000 familybased preference visas were lost largely because of the pandemic-related freeze in the 2020 budget year, according to the American Immigrant Lawyers Association.
Immigrants could not bring over family members unless they were US citizens applying for visas for their spouses or children under the age of 21.
It also barred entry to immigrants with employmentbased visas unless they were considered beneficial to the national interest such as health care professionals.
And it slammed the door on thousands of visa lottery winners who were randomly chosen from a pool of about 14 million applicants to be given green cards that would let them live permanently in the country.
The blocked visas add to a growing backlog that has reached 437,000 for family-based visas alone, said California immigration lawyer Curtis Morrison, who represented thousands of people blocked by the freeze.
“I’m thrilled for my clients who are now in a position that they can now enter the US,” he said.
“But that backlog will take years if the administration does not take ambitious measures.”
A federal judge last year issued a ruling that all but lifted Proclamation 10052 by allowing temporary foreign workers to enter the US if their employers are members of the US Chamber of Commerce or several other large organizations that represent much of the US economy.
But Proclamation 10014 continued to block thousands of immigrants.
Immigration lawyers said they were surprised Biden did not immediately lift the freeze like he did with Trump’s travel ban imposed against people from mostly Muslim-majority countries. As a result, some immigrants blocked by the travel ban found they still could not come to the US.