Why Jamie Lee Curtis Is Wrong About Plastic Surgery

Monique Ramsey (00:03):
Welcome everyone to the La Jolla Cosmetic Podcast. I have Hannah here with me today, and we have something that we just kind of want to sound off about because I don't know if you saw this article a couple of weeks ago, but both for both Hannah and for me, it just was like nails on a chalkboard and we just have to talk about it. So, hi Hannah, how are you?

Hannah (00:23):
Hey, I'm good. Other than having a little fire under my butt right now about this, but I'm just ready to rant with you.

Monique Ramsey (00:31):
Yeah, because okay, what we're talking about, we'll put the link in the show notes is a long article that The Guardian did a couple weeks ago, so late July, Jamie Lee Curtis, and what she said about plastic surgery and what she said, and I quote, "it's the genocide of a generation of women." Excuse me. We have thoughts about this. And so we were talking offline the other day and I'm like, wait a minute. We need to talk about this online with our audience and see what people think. And so we want to hear from you guys too in the comments like what you think. So we have some big thoughts. So Hannah, let's set the record straight about what we think about this plastic surgery assault by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Hannah (01:29):
Well, first of all, genocide is a very offensive word to use, and there are so many other words that we could have used instead of that, and we'll list those at the end. We have a little ramble sesh of other ways she could have worded it. But first off, it was literally like Monique said, nails on a chalkboard, because I went to school for journalism and I am a grammar nerd. Spelling was my best class in elementary school. English was my best class all through high school and college. And I'm like, so it really made me squirm inside and out, and I had to reach out. I reached out to Monique. I don't think she knew about it until I was like, "Hey, Jamie Lee Curtis said this thing. That's awful." But before that, a few months ago, there was an article about her saying she had eyelid surgery when she was 25, and that she regrets doing that. So I was like, okay, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't like plastic surgery. Okay, fine. She said she regrets it. That's fine. Some people,

Monique Ramsey (02:39):
And she's 66 now, so she's 66. So when she was 25, yeah,

Hannah (02:43):
She's still thinking about this.

Monique Ramsey (02:48):
Obsessed much? Okay.

Hannah (02:48):
Yeah. Such a hater. Anyway, so then I see this and I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh. She is a total hater.

Monique Ramsey (03:01):
And you guys have to, so we're going to put the link in the show notes because the picture that they used for this article, she posed with big wax lips, like huge wax lips as her statement against plastic surgery pressures.

Hannah (03:22):
First of all, filler isn't surgery, not to get too technical here.

Monique Ramsey (03:27):
Right? True.

Hannah (03:30):
And that's what the wax lips are signifying, I'm guessing, is

Monique Ramsey (03:33):
Yeah, okay filler but that's

Hannah (03:34):
Lip filler. Plastic surgery can be extremely, it's not always about appearance, and if it is, it's an appearance that literally is bothering someone so much that they can't even look in the mirror. But we'll get into that.

Monique Ramsey (03:52):
Yeah. So the rest of the quote, she said, "I've been very vocal about a genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex" Okay, ChatGPT. Well, that's a whole different group of people. Cosmeceuticals is like some skincare that we're hawking over on Instagram or something, or it's snail mucin on TikTok, salmon sperm, and I mean, come on. So that's another thing. But she's talking about plastic surgery and "generation of women who've disfigured themselves," and then she says, "the wax lips really sends it all home or sends it home."

Hannah (04:37):
Okay. Her grammar, other than using the word genocide, she said, the wax lips really sends it home. It's send it because lips is plural. And then she said, the wax lips is my statement. The wax lips are my statement. So much wrong with this. Also, just noticed disfigured is in there. That is a total terrible word to use.

Monique Ramsey (05:01):
So for the grammar nerds in the audience, of which I'm also one, I was a composition center tutor in high school, which is the dorky people who during lunch, you could help other people with their essays and stuff. They'd bring it and we'd help them not do it for them. We'd have to instruct them on how maybe they could say it in a better way, which is hard to do, actually. So I've been that way too. And from your copywriting perspective, in my old school class of 1985, just had our 40 year reunion perspective. Come on. So yeah, Jamie Lee at 66 years old, but I think it's a shock value type of thing too. She's obviously trying to get some headlines about this, but I think what is damaging in my opinion to say something like this is that, yeah, of course there's the one percenters who take it to the extreme where it's like, oh my gosh, and that's what you might see on TV. That's what you might see on Instagram or TikTok, but that's not the vast majority. And what we see as with our patients every day, and I've almost 34 years of working in this business, that's not who is your normal plastic surgery patient. And so I guess to me, it becomes a little bit damaging. And to your point of if that's something that really bothers you, do you want to be bullied into not thinking it matters by Jamie Lee Curtis,

Hannah (06:40):
Who's surrounded by fellow celebrities and has been since her early twenties when she, or was she a child star? I don't know. She's a nepo baby. She, that's what

Monique Ramsey (06:50):
They, yeah, Nepo baby. Her mom and dad were both

Hannah (06:53):
She's been surrounded by celebrities her whole life.

Monique Ramsey (06:55):
Her first movie was at 19, 19 years old,

Hannah (06:59):
And celebrities are the ones that tend to take it too far. I don't know if, because they have so much money or they think that the camera takes away some surgery, I don't know. But they're the ones that take it far and that's what she,

Monique Ramsey (07:11):
It add 10 pounds and removes 20 years.

Hannah (07:16):
So of course, she's surrounded by people who overdo it. But you can't be putting this against all the women and men out there in the entire world who get this done because of little, it's just tiny tweaks

Monique Ramsey (07:31):
Our patients are just regular people and they just want to feel better about themselves, feel like a better version of themselves, give themselves that extra bit of confidence. If you go get your hair and makeup done, or you buy a brand new dress and you go out and you feel like you're just holding your head a little bit higher, you feel really good. And that's that same feeling, but you have it every day because maybe you took away the eye bags or you fixed ears. Oh, I didn't even have that in my thought process. Things like if people have their ears sticking out and there's life changing things that plastic surgeons do, and so maybe we talk about some of these misconceptions about her taking a paintbrush or her big plastic red lips and painting in a whole industry with this one brush.

Hannah (08:30):
Yesterday, Monique and I were in a meeting with another lady who works at LJCSC, Brittney, and she said something so good about this situation, because obviously I was telling her and Monique at the same time, because I was fired up about it. And she said, hating on women for doing something that makes them feel more confident in their bodies is a form of body shaming period. And she's so right.

Monique Ramsey (08:55):
Exactly. And if your genes have dictated that your profile is you have a really weak chin, or you have a really large nose, or you have, you're bottom heavy, you're really small on the top, but you feel like you're out of proportion on the bottom, there's an endless list. And so we were kind of thinking about what's superficial in Jamie Lee Curtis's mind versus what isn't? What's actually, I feel like nothing should be superficial. If it bothers you right then and you want to fix it, you should be able to do that.

Hannah (09:36):
Okay. So of course, Jaime Lee Curtis is going to hate on plastic surgery because she's been stick thin her whole life. She's been so thin. But there are people who just naturally store fat and really stubborn places, and it does not go away with exercise or diet. And so they use things like liposuction to remove it. Well, Jamie Lee Curtis, obviously, she's going to hate on plastic surgery because she's never really had anything that she needed it for, really. So that is another reason why it's a form of body shaming.

Monique Ramsey (10:15):
You have celebrities who are, it's just our culture that they're constantly making their opinions known, whether it's about politics or religion or food, and whether you agree that they're worth listening to or not, they are, and they are influencers. So when you have that kind of microphone and that amplification, you could really do some damage for people who think, what if you are just so embarrassed about something about yourself and you want to change it? And then you see this Oscar winning actress who is pretty au naturel in, they airbrush her. They still do, because I looked. But in a lot we have the receipts. Receipts. So then what kind of damage is that doing to make somebody feel so bad about themselves for wanting to fix something?

Hannah (11:22):
By announcing your hatred for something that has totally changed other people's lives? Like it's changed my life completely, and I'll talk about that later. But it's just very small minded to do because people don't just get it to accentuate themselves. Some people get it to tweak themselves, and when it's done properly, you can't even tell.

Monique Ramsey (11:52):
Yeah. Well, do you mind sharing? You want to tell everybody?

Hannah (11:57):
Let's get into that list. Yeah. So we actually have a whole list of reasons people get plastic surgery that aren't superficial,

(12:08):
Because most of the time, at least 90% of the time, it's not superficial. So for example, I had a rhinoplasty because I absolutely hated to see my reflection, and I could not stand seeing a video of me or a photo of me taken from the side. I literally would, I'm not going to lie, I photoshopped my nose. Sometimes I would tweak the bump off of it with an airbrush app. It was getting to a point. Yeah, it was literally some people would be like, oh, it gives you personality, it gives you character. Your nose is cute. I'm like, no, you might say that, but it's not your nose. It's my nose.

Monique Ramsey (12:58):
But no, you're right. I think the point that you're saying is if it bothers you, who cares? And if you're not doing it for anybody but yourself, then who does anybody else have to? Who are they to say and be judging? And I feel like it's kind of, I know she doesn't care what people think about her. And she says that everywhere in all her articles I was reading this morning, she did a 60 minutes interview. And I know it's for shock value a little bit just to bring attention to the topic, but there's a lot of lists. Say you're talking about rhinoplasty, septoplasty, which is for breathing issues. It's not necessarily cosmetic procedure, but a lot of times you might want to change the outside of your nose, but also the internal structure. And plastic surgeons, that's what they're trained to do. So that isn't a vanity thing. I want to breathe a hundred percent of the air that I'm trying to breathe.

Hannah (14:04):
And then rhinoplasty for broken noses. Some people literally break their nose and they need to get rhinoplasty.

Monique Ramsey (14:10):
But Jamie Lee said,

Hannah (14:11):
None of these are societal pressures. Mine wasn't a societal pressure. It was an inner pressure that I had with myself. It's nobody's business, nobody else affected me but myself. And that's the case most of the time, people are just bothered by it internally.

Monique Ramsey (14:29):
Right. So what other things are there that people that fall in the same list of procedures that are not because society is telling them to do it? Liposuction for lipedema, it's a condition that is hereditary and it's in your family, on your mom's side, you're going to get it. So guess who has it? I have it. And we just, I think, talked about Dr. Salazar with him about it recently, and he just opened up an Instagram so we could talk more about it. Just about

Hannah (15:07):
We'll link that.

Monique Ramsey (15:08):
Yeah, just about lipedema. So lipedema is a condition, and it's really heavy legs or arms, but the fat is more fibrous. It's more maybe cottage cheesy looking, and things are heavier knees, and there's different stages of it, and there's a whole thing. But that's a medical condition. And so for women, and it's I think a hundred percent women, for women who have this condition, think about trying to buy a pair of pants if your from the knees up to your waist is so big that you can't find pants that fit. And then they're typically very small on their upper body. Sometimes it happens in their arms, but a lot of times it's like their legs and it's this heavy leg syndrome or something. And so like, oh, are we going to say that that's not okay, Jamie Lee Curtis?

Hannah (16:05):
They're technically getting this plastic surgery that she's hating on liposuction is technically plastic surgery. Is it not a form of plastic surgery?

Monique Ramsey (16:16):
Absolutely.

Hannah (16:16):
But they're getting it for something that is totally left field of what she was talking about.

Monique Ramsey (16:21):
And not in their control. There's not any kind of diet and exercise to make it go away. You can manage it with food and certain kinds of, there's different lymphatic or massage specialists who work, and one of them is right here in San Diego. It's not even a medical diagnosis code yet, because the whole medical community just doesn't even notice these people. But yet 10% of women have this condition in some varying degree of severity. So that's one. And I was thinking also, what about breast reconstruction after mastectomy, you've had a full mastectomy on one or both breasts and you want to have some fullness back. Does that make you, is that okay or not? Okay? I feel like it's pretty okay, honestly. But I don't know in Jamie's world, is that okay?

Hannah (17:22):
And also snapping back after pregnancy or extreme weight loss, people are getting procedures to tighten up after both of those things.

Monique Ramsey (17:35):
Good point.

Hannah (17:36):
That's plastic surgery that they're getting after.

Monique Ramsey (17:39):
Yeah. And I am going to say the L word. Are we ready for the L word? Labiaplasty?

Hannah (17:47):
Not to make everybody uncomfortable.

Monique Ramsey (17:48):
Yeah. Sorry, not to make you uncomfortable. Labiaplasty. Okay. It's a real thing. And it's not just because we have this societal pressure to have the most perfect, what are we going to call it?

Hannah (18:05):
Just want to be comfortable.

Monique Ramsey (18:06):
The lady bits. And if you, and this also could be something from after pregnancy, having kids, or it could aging, losing hormones down there. The tissues get really lax. Or what about if you're just born that way and all of a sudden you're trying to wear spandex and go to yoga class or go on a bike and there's too much tissue and it's in the way, or things aren't really uncomfortable. Again, that's not a vanity thing, but maybe you feel more comfortable in an intimate situation because you don't feel like there's too much skin happening. So there's some vanity there, but there's also some comfort in lifestyle things. And I don't judge anybody who wants to make that decision.

Hannah (18:50):
Not at all. Labiaplasty would be totally life-changing. Imagine wearing Lululemon leggings and then going to pilates, and you're not comfortable with the way your labia looks. Well, some of these Pilates moves. You're literally opening your legs right up for everybody around you. It's in your instructor's face, pretty much. And if it's shaped weird and you're worried about that, and then you're not going to even feel comfortable enough to wear leggings, in most cases.

Monique Ramsey (19:23):
You'd have to go to pickleball, straight to pickleball, and a pickleball skirt,

Hannah (19:25):
Wear a little skirt. Tennis skirt.

Monique Ramsey (19:27):
Yeah. No, but I'm not trying to be funny. But honestly, these are real issues. And I think, again, going back to her big red waxy lips, kind of painting an industry in a certain way. I'm this smart woman, I'm super successful, and this isn't, okay. You are being controlled by the cosmeceutical industrial complex. No, not really. I don't think. Some people, of course, there's some people who go through Instagram, I want to look like that. Okay, that's normal. That's honestly normal. We all want to look like our best selves. We all

Hannah (20:09):
It's no different from back in before, pre Hannah, when people would look through magazines and be like, oh, I want to look like her. I want to look like this model. It's so different. Well, to have this isn't new. People just want to be their best.

Monique Ramsey (20:28):
Right? And be confident. And I mean, tell me what you think pre, pre Hannah, post Hannah. No, really? How much mental space is freed up by you not having to think about it anymore? Because it's fixed?

Hannah (20:45):
My nose? Yeah. I literally, I feel like I've been better at my job for one, I've been better at working out. I do my makeup way faster. I don't have to worry about contouring it a certain way. It's saving. It's literally saved me so much time and energy. And honestly, no one has noticed. People only notice when I point it out.

Monique Ramsey (21:11):
Yeah, well for you.

Hannah (21:13):
And that's what it is most of the time.

Monique Ramsey (21:14):
And that's,

Hannah (21:15):
For me, it changed my life. I can finally take pictures like this and be like, yep, I look good in that and post it.

Monique Ramsey (21:22):
And feel good. Well, okay. And I was thinking about this one male breast reduction surgery, good one. Up to at some point in their life, up to 60% of men can have too much breast tissue. Either too much fat, too much skin, too much of both, whether it's a lifestyle thing, because maybe they have some recreational drugs that trigger hormone production that then trigger bigger man boobs. Or if they take some steroids or they're just born that way and they're embarrassed, they don't even take off their shirt when they go to the beach or in front of a partner in an intimate situation, you're not doing it. Maybe part of that's for vanity, but who cares? Fix it and be on your way to freeing up your brain power to do other things and think about other things.

Hannah (22:22):
And then there's facelifts, neck lifts, all of those procedures that are meant to make your outside match how you feel on the inside. So if you feel super young and energetic, why would you want to portray, why would you want your outside to look any less young and energetic?

Monique Ramsey (22:41):
Okay, one last thing about different facial surgeries. So what about eyelid lifts? If your upper eyelid skin is so hooded, it's so loose. There actually are sometimes where it blocks your field of vision. And in those cases, which is pretty rare, but in those cases, a lot of times a insurance company would even cover taking out the extra skin of your upper eyelid because it blocks your field of vision and you need that to drive and stuff like that. So not everything is vanity and being pushed on us by whatever complex we're talking about. But let's talk, since you and I are the grammar nerds or, okay, what are the things that she could have said instead of genocide, which is totally hyperbolic, offensive, insensitive? Come on, let's not throw around those kind of words. I was offended. Were you offended?

Hannah (23:45):
Yeah. I may not have been personally affected by a genocide in my lifetime, but I know that that's an extremely offensive word to people who have been, and oh, it's just so insensitive.

Monique Ramsey (23:58):
Yeah,

Hannah (23:59):
I mean, she's definitely trying to get that PR because of Freakier Friday, which is crazy because she filmed it with Lindsay Lohan, who looks amazing because guess what?

Monique Ramsey (24:12):
She looks like she's 12 again.

Hannah (24:12):
She had surgery. She did. She might deny it, but she had something done.

Monique Ramsey (24:18):
Totally.

Hannah (24:19):
She had more than laser.

Monique Ramsey (24:20):
And she looks amazing. She looks great.

Hannah (24:22):
So Jaime Lee Curtis is just trying to get attention, but here's what she could have said. I have a list. And Monique, do you have a list too?

Monique Ramsey (24:30):
I have a few, yeah.

Hannah (24:31):
Okay. So she could have said, damage to women's self image, the destruction of a generation of women's natural features, which I don't like any of these either, but it's better than saying genocide, right?

Monique Ramsey (24:44):
Right.

Hannah (24:44):
The obliteration of natural beauty, obliteration like, come on. That's a word. The eradication. Eradication of natural beauty. Why do we whip out genocide? That's so disturbing.

Monique Ramsey (24:58):
No, it is. Or like a corruption of a generation's maybe. In her opinion, it has been corrupted by, and she talked about all these filters and yeah, but guess what? Even 60 minutes is filtering you as you're talking, because you'd see, all of a sudden her cheek would get kind of blurry and then she'd move and her neck would get kind of blurry. So they're sitting there on as their post-production, they're making her look better, which I think is hilarious. And they touched her up for The Guardian too. So then it's like, okay, well, are we being our real self? Are we going to tell if you really believe in this to be your authentic self, then tell the magazines you're not going to allow them to touch you up. No touching up allowed. She could pull that off. They'll say, yes, but no, she's all touched up.

(25:58):
Or how about an industrial assault on a generation of women's faces or harm to a generation? I mean, you could simply say harm, harm, harm. Not genocide. All right. So lastly, she discussed the phenomenon of wiping out these generations of beauty through plastic surgery, noting that "the pressure to conform to unrealistic standards is particularly harmful to young people." I agree. There is a whole lot of money being made over in Sephora and Ulta and aimed at preteens. And is that the right thing? And I agree, there's a, but you know what? I'm sorry. Even way back in the day, you'd look through your glossy magazine instead of looking on Instagram, but it's the same, like you said, it's the same thing. But it said, she believes that social media with its emphasis on filtering and editing is contributing to the problem, likening it, get ready, get ready for this, to "giving a chainsaw to a toddler due to the potential for long-term physical and mental harm." And then she says right after it says, "Curtis also emphasizes that she does not judge individuals who choose to undergo plastic surgery, but rather speaks out against the societal pressures that drive these choices."

(27:33):
I think you do judge the individuals, or you wouldn't be talking about it, but that's just me. That's my opinion based on what I've seen you say. And I get it, she's 25 years old. She's being told by a director, I'm not shooting her today, because her eyes look baggy. So after the movie wrapped, she goes and gets her lower eyes done. But that was her choice. That was her choice, and that's what industry she's in. And you know what? Right or wrong, she could have not done that. She felt she needed to. Her parents were actors, and she saw her parents sort of start to get ignored by Hollywood because they were getting older, but back then there was also a lot of older actors and actresses that did just fine. So I don't know. She's seeing it through her filter and her lens, I guess, which is how we all do. So yeah, I think your point about the Freakier Friday, didn't that just open a few days ago?

Hannah (28:35):
Yeah, like the last weekend.

Monique Ramsey (28:38):
So maybe this is a little bit of a PR stunt.

Hannah (28:40):
Yeah, it's a PR stunt for sure. But we're falling into the trap because we just wanted to rant. We were personally offended.

Monique Ramsey (28:47):
We had to talk about it with you guys listening, I hope. I want to hear what you think really though. What do we think about what was said? What do we think about some of the things she brought up? We'll put some links in the show notes because there was several different articles. There was a NewBeauty article. There's the 60 minutes, 13 minute piece. And I think it's interesting, and she definitely is coming at it from her own perspective, but at the same time, to then be judging a whole generation or multiple generations of women and men who might choose to do this for their own reasons, I think where it's hard for me to get behind.

Hannah (29:29):
Yeah. Yeah. She should have just said the celebrities and then left it at that. Because putting it down to people like us, everyday people, I don't know. She grouped everyone, the whole generation. That's just disturbing.

Monique Ramsey (29:47):
Or many generations. No, you're right. You're right. Yeah. So long story short, we don't like her choice of words. I'm totally fine with her not getting anything done. She looks great. She looks amazing, but she looked amazing at 19, she looked amazing, looks now amazing at 20 or 66 without having surgery. That's awesome. I love it.

Hannah (30:10):
Good for her. But not everyone can bring those genes forward.

Monique Ramsey (30:17):
Yeah, she looks amazing. She does. And no, it's not against her. It's really her choice of words. And I think your words matter, and you have a really, really big megaphone. So what she's doing could also be causing harm to a group of people, just as much harm as what she sees. The cosmeceutical industrial complex, I'm sorry.

Hannah (30:42):
Her grouping Sephora and Ulta into plastic surgery, which is a medical industry, is just very bad taste. Bad taste.

Monique Ramsey (30:54):
No, but shock value. She got us, right?

Hannah (30:58):
Yeah, she got us there.

Monique Ramsey (31:01):
Well, Hannah, thank you for doing this with me because this was really fun. And you're right, I didn't know about it until it was brought up yesterday.

Hannah (31:08):
I'll keep bringing stuff like this up to you and we can react together. And you do the same to me.

Monique Ramsey (31:15):
I will. Because I'm sure our feeds are different. There's only 30 years difference between us, so that's definitely what we're seeing coming through the feed is different. So I like that because I'd like to talk about some topics that I have thoughts about, and I know you have thoughts too.

Hannah (31:33):
Our perspectives might be the same, might be a little different, and it would be fun. So stay tuned for more reactions from Monique and me.

Monique Ramsey (31:41):
Alright, so if you're listening today, check the show notes, give us your opinions. I want to hear from you all about what your opinions are about this. I am genuinely interested and since we had to talk about it, I want to hear from y'all. Thanks for listening.

Laura Cain (31:55):
Take a screenshot of this podcast episode with your phone and show it at your consultation or appointment or mention the promo code podcast to receive $25 off any service or product of $50 or more at La Jolla Cosmetic. La Jolla Cosmetic is located just off the I-5 San Diego Freeway in the XiMED Building on the Scripps Memorial Hospital campus. To learn more, go to ljcsc.com or follow the team on Instagram @ljcsc. The La Jolla Cosmetic Podcast is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.