Life in Plastic: The True Origin of Cosmetic Medicine
My first love was plastic surgery - and I always find it interesting to see the connotation associated with it today. People call women “plastic” as an insult, evoking the image of a Barbie doll, shaped and unnaturally molded to a male-centric ideal.
That is not what plastic surgery (or aesthetic medicine) is, was, or should be.
Plastic comes from the Greek “plastike”(teckhne) the art of modeling or sculpting, meaning return to form and function.
We know how much I love my medical history, and the origin of all cosmetic treatments really stemmed from the devastating facial traumas that were seen after the World Wars.
More articles on Medical History
A century ago, "radiant" wasn't a metaphor. Radium was in face creams, tonics and toothpaste, sold as the secret to glowing, youthful skin — while, in factories nearby, young women who painted it onto watch dials were quietly dying of it. This is the story of the glow, the girls, and the reckoning that changed how we protect people from the things we sell them.