CATEGORY AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST 131 REALITY BITES least here in Thailand, is positively bursting with fast, invasive, pastel-coloured direct marketed encouragement to go under its lights, lasers, knives, suction devices and needles in order to become beautiful, or confident, or something. What this translates to for youngerThai, and medical tourists, is the promise of a surgically enhanced self-worth. The medical scene here is vividly aware of this. It underwrites all the marketing. They sell everything from white smiles and complete ‘smile makeovers’ to the young, giving them a more European ‘look’, to go with their bleach-whitened complexions, American hairstyles and fake Gucci handbags, to ‘aesthetic improvement’ offerings from other specialists, bullishly exploring the goldrush in non-medical medical services. So to speak! Here on my phone, every morning, in Thailand, I am encouraged and persuaded to have my belly surgically emptied of its lovely curves and upholsteries, my arms trimmed with a knife, my hips carved off and my facial features re-carved or reupholstered or sculpted with lasers and blades. The ads come with eye-popping up close images of headless bodies showing the cut marks involved in such surgeries, and patients being operated on, or drawn on by Thai surgeons in the kind of ghoulish vivid detail that might work in Asia, but would horrify the average potential Australian patient. We love to see Before and Afters. But the Thai are more impressed by Durings. “Perhaps it makes them feel like they’re getting real value for money if they can actually see the work in their ads, rather than just the results?” My local friend explained. “We’re totally used to false advertising,” she said, “It’s part of the culture. What we want to see is that there’s actual medical work involved. We’re very impressed by medicine.” It began with the tooth and smile ads, and the belly fat ads. Things have become far more complex and even alarming. Among Facebook ads and videos selling me root canals, crowns and strange spicy black toothpastes which could allegedly heal my teeth, from the inside out, I am urged to have my breasts inflated, my butt re-shaped, eyebrows re-arched, thighs carved off, hips sucked and sliced straight off the bone, pubic area padded out with surgically implanted cushions, labia cut and bleached, and other inner parts lasered, surgically sculpted and otherwise meddled with by doctors, despite there being nothing actually wrong with them. Looking around me here, on the sandy chicken-strewn streets of coconut-tree shaded Thailand island life, I can see there have been quite a few takers for this sort of thing. The young Thai girls have the telltale signs of dabbling in medically-provided non-medical benefits. It’s always the teeth that give the game away. Too white! You can just tell. Then there’s the slightly too high, too pumped up, not quite classic Asian bustline. Then there’s the new nose. The day they turn up at the gym with their lips five times the size they were yesterday. The oddly anti-gravity and super-round new buttocks profile in their imported lycra hot pants. The cameltoe, alarmingly enlarged and vigorous. These surgeries are not signs, here, of having the basics of life handled and well in place, so that luxuries and non-essentials can be sought and enjoyed. They are becoming vital interventions in the race to secure sexual attention and employment in the young. In the fifty-plus market, they are excruciating to see, and awkward to ignore. One bouncy Portuguese 60-something avid consumer of aesthetic services I know here, has in two months had her entire set of teeth turned a kind of Bathroom White, reminiscent of abandoned horse bones in a nuclear hot American desert, while her matching new lips, overblown to alarming proportions, extend almost an inch off her face, stretched to a juicy limit that is frightening to witness, and give the impression that at any moment her entire mouth could just explode like a big, swollen, weird sort of blister. She has also had, she told me, eight sessions of Vampire Facials involving blood removal, and reinjection into her face, implants in her buttocks, thighs, cheeks and chin, a mini facelift, botox (goes without saying), eyelid surgery and can’t wait to get her muffin top cut off in Dubai, where she has booked a luxury surgical holiday. u PROFESSIONAL DENTIST SUPPLIES - 3/8 NICOLE CLOSE BAYSWATER NORTH VIC AUSTRALIA - 03 9761 6615 - sales@profdent.com.au - ABN 69 088 275 576 WWW.PROFDENT.COM.AU FOGOFF #SUPPORTAUSTRALIAN Used by dentists since 1989 on dental loupes & mirrors. FogOff can also be used to stop spectacles, sports goggles, car windscreens and bathroom mirrors from fogging
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTc3NDk3Mw==