Advertisement

Brazilian clinics offer free cosmetic surgery to poor women

In North America, plastic surgery is seen as a luxury for the rich — and sometimes the ridiculous. In Brazil, however, many clinics — more than 220, according to a recent Associated Press article — offer thousands of poor women free cosmetic procedures.

This raises the question, are Botox and chemical peels really what the country's underprivileged women need? At first glance, offering up free cosmetic surgery seems frivolous, considering Brazil still contends with diseases like dengue fever and tuberculosis.

Related: Women's rights activists demand ban on U.K. cosmetic surgery ads

However, Brazilian cosmetic surgeons — some of the best in the world — argue they do more than smoothing wrinkles and correcting physical flaws. They say they're helping to heal psychological problems, too.

Celebrated cosmetic surgeon — and a Brazilian hero — Dr. Ivo Pitanguy did much to spread the idea that plastic surgeons heal minds, not bodies. According to the New York Times, Pitanguy says a cosmetic surgeon is a "psychologist with a scalpel in his hand."

Dr. Nelson Rosas, who heads the Rio branch of the Brazilian Society of Aesthetic Medicine's Rio clinic, echoed Pitanguy's sentiments in his comments to AP.

"What's a wrinkle? Something minor, right? Something with precious little importance," Rosas says. "But when we treat the wrinkle, that unimportant little thing, we're actually treating something very important: The patient's self esteem."

Related: Want a fuller brow? Get a neck hair transplant

They may be right, but what is the source of that low self-esteem? The Brazilian appetite for cosmetic surgery is beat only by that of the United States, and getting cosmetic surgery is now de rigeur among the upper and middle classes.

It's possible to pin the psychological need to undergo painful cosmetic procedures on a culture that prizes physical beauty and encourages women to stop at nothing to get it.