Amy Winehouse was spotted leaving a doctor’s office, and don’t her lips look a little fuller? I’m so happy she’s taking an interest in her appearance now, but maybe she should hold off on all the cosmetic surgery before she develops another addiction. [London, 11/5/09]

I love being a woman, but there are plenty of things I envy about the opposite sex, too. The whole standing up when they pee thing is pretty convenient (as are their short lines for public bathrooms!), but what’s especially nice for guys is how well they age. Let’s face it, appearance-wise, women tend to peak pretty early in their adulthood, but a lot of men really get better with age. They look distinguished, not haggard. Take George Clooney, for example. The guy’s nearing 50 and he’s never looked better, which is why I was pretty surprised to hear he allegedly had blepharoplasty surgery to remove the bags under his eyes. I thought he looked sexy with a little puffiness — like he spent the whole night drinking Scotch on the rocks and doing it with his younger girlfriend and couldn’t be bothered to get any sleep. Take a look at the photographic evidence and tell me what you think. Better with bags or without? Personally, I’d like to spread him on my dinner roll either way. [via Daily Mail]

Just can’t stop yourself from eating the three solid meals a day that are totally making you F-A-T? Can’t afford costly stomach stapling and/or Courtney Love‘s favorite detox spa? Have we got a solution for you! California cosmetic surgeon Dr. Nikolas Chugay (interesting name) has developed a wildly innovative weight loss tool. He’ll sew a mesh patch over your tongue, which makes eating food so excruciatingly painful that patients are forced to stick to a liquid diet. Ten whole patients have been crazy desperate brave enough to try it and some lost “as much as 20 pounds” a month after the surgery. Kinda makes exercise and salads sound appealing, no? For patients who can’t make it out to see Dr. Chugay, we’ve got another solution: Simply imagining there is a mesh patch on your tongue is a total appetite killer! [Chicago Tribune]

Imagine you’re getting dressed in front of your boyfriend and you ask the cliché question: “Do I look fat?” (We hope not, but just for the sake of argument here…) And his response is, “Well actually, do you want to do something about that?”

What would it be like to date a plastic surgeon—someone who spends his life producing and considering the “ideal” in female beauty? The New York Times‘s T style magazine investigates this question in its latest issue. The answers, surprisingly, are a mixed bag. There’s what you might expect—women who are cosmetic surgery fans ask their partners to help them out (and they do so willingly). One celeb surgeon, Dr. Raj Kanodia (Jen Aniston‘s nose man) has been known to dole out freebies to the ladies. “With previous girlfriends,” he says, “I’ve always done something—a little injection, a little Botox, and several of them I’ve done noses either during the relationship or after we broke up.”

Obviously, money is a huge hurdle when it comes to Obama’s trillion-dollar health-care plan, but here’s one revenue source government officials may consider: tax on plastic surgery. The excise “bo-tax” (no we didn’t make that term up, but wish we could take credit) allegedly being floated around by the feds would be placed on cosmetic procedures that aren’t medical necessities, like boob jobs, teeth whitening, Botox injections, and face lifts. New Jersey already imposes such taxes, the revenue of which, we’d surmise, comes largely from the cast of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.”

You’ve heard of cosmetic surgery procedures where fat from your butt goes into your boobs, but would you take hair from your head and put it into your eyes? Louise Thomas, a 19-year-old UK resident, was the first person in the country to undergo the process in which doctors removed hairs from the back of her neck and implanted them into cuts in her eyelid. After a few months, the hair follicles will flourish and produce thick, authentic lashes.

While Thomas opted to have the $5,000-plus surgery for medical reasons—she suffers from the hair-pulling disease trichotillomania—the procedure’s quick recovery time and lack of pain could make it an appealing option for beauty addicts looking to hop on the next craze. On the other hand, if the no-eyebrow look is all the rage, maybe an eyelash-free thing could take off. Let’s hope not. [AFP, MarieClaire.co.uk]

“Ever had plastic surgery to become beautiful? Are you proud of your body? Would you like to put yourself to the test?” These are all questions most beauty queens would be too embarrassed to answer, but one Hungarian company isn’t afraid to ask. The website MissPlasticHungary.hu is seeking contestants for what it says is the first ever beauty pageant for women who have had cosmetic surgery. Pageant organizers are trying to fight the stigma associated with beauty operations in Hungary. The contest is open to women between the ages of 18 and 30 and to women older than 30 in the “dame” category, all of whom must have had a surgical procedure performed under local or general anesthesia; a simple Botox injection won’t suffice, and neither will extremely large breasts (remember they’re trying to fight the stigma?). So far, 100 entrants have already signed up for the pageant that is supposed to occur on October 9. Maybe Carrie Prejean has a pageant comeback in her future? [Reuters]

Teenager Jodie King had tried several expensive anti-aging creams, but none would smooth the “wrinkles” on her forehead. So her mom, Margaret, gave her Botox injections for her 18th birthday. “Jodie’s forehead is like mine - she gets pronounced lines when she makes a facial expression. I knew Botox would solve the problem,” said Margaret. The £160 injections gifted to Jodie pale in comparison to the £45,000 Margaret has spent on cosmetic surgery for herself. Jodie is a Botox addict now, having spent £1,000 of her own money made from modeling on injections. Margaret, who has been getting the injections for 11 years and has had a nose job, two breast enlargements, a tummy tuck, and a mini-face lift, doesn’t see anything wrong with her daughter inheriting her vice. She’s even planning to give Jodie a nose job for her 21st birthday and has taken her for a breast augmentation consultation. “My mum’s always looked so glamorous and she uses cosmetic surgery and Botox to keep her looking young. I plan to follow in her footsteps,” Jodie said. “So what if I’m a teenage Botox addict? I can’t think of anything worse than looking old. I’ll always find a way to pay for Botox. Now I’ve started I can’t stop.”

Sandra McElwaine at The Daily Beast wants to know, “Who Did Nancy Pelosi’s New Face?” The Speaker of the House (who just turned 69) has been sporting a, uh, much tighter looking mug, causing many to strongly suspect she’s had a heavy dose of plastic surgery. The slideshow of images does make for a compelling argument. But should we care? Should this even be a topic of conversation when there’s, you know, an economic crisis and other more serious issues to discuss? Well, maybe not, but then again, should we be wasting precious economic crisis discussion time talking about men in Hello Kitty boxers, “The Millionaire Matchmaker,” or the war between Julia Allison and Mary Rambin? Those things are just dying for attention and it’s our duty to give it to them! Unfortunately, when you’re the Speaker of the House and your face suddenly looks like it got trapped in a wind tunnel, you kind of can’t blame people for wanting to gossip about it.

We are all a little strapped for time nowadays. It seems there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. But there’s always time to squeeze in a few errands during lunch. Drop off dry cleaning; run to the bank; pay the cable bill; get liposuction! No seriously. Now you can get the lard sucked out of your thighs while you wait for Subway to finish preparing your six-inch sandwich. Smartlipo is a less invasive form of liposuction that can be done during your lunch break. A tiny instrument, like the size of a pencil point, is used to make the incision. And voila! It starts sucking the fat away from those hard to target areas. The most popular areas Smartlipo is being used on are the abs, love-handles and outer thighs. A woman who had the procedure done said, “It’s better than getting a cavity filled.” Yeah, a sharp object digging into my fleshy stomach—don’t know if that’s better than getting a cavity filled. Actually, they both sound like pretty crappy ways to spend a lunch break. So what are the differences between Smartlipo and regular cosmetic surgery?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look your best and taking pride in your appearance. But looking your best has been taken to a new extreme, as more people are opting to get cosmetic surgery and enhancements—after they’re dead. Morticians are getting an increase in requests in cosmetic procedures when it comes to how the the deceased will look like at the funeral. The requests have included lip plumping, smoothing wrinkles and even boosting sagging parts. People are making advanced arrangements for these final procedures to be done for the viewing at their funerals. Is it that serious?

The New York Times has an interesting story in today’s Style section about how the recession and tanking economy will affect the cosmetic surgery and beauty industries. Will people, specifically women, start scrimping on beauty products and cut spending on Botox, boob jobs, pricey gym memberships, and fad diets?

Indeed, a few indicators suggest that financial constraints are beginning to interrupt the narrative of better living through surgery — at least temporarily. Sixty-two percent of plastic surgeons who responded to a recent questionnaire from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons said they had performed fewer procedures in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the latest anecdotal information from the group.

Personally, I don’t think this will last. The pursuit of perfection is a vice and an addiction, and like sex and booze, which thrive during tough economic times, the desire to look better and younger will never die.

Now that you’ve read “Girl Talk: I’ve Had Labiaplasty Surgery” (doesn’t that sound like a future episode of MTV’s “True Life”?) we want you to weigh in on the somewhat controversial cosmetic procedure.

Every cloud has its silver lining and, in this case, that silver is going gray gracefully!  The bottom isn’t just dropping out of the economy, in American’s cases, it’s spilling over pants proudly.  Due to the falling economy, people are willing to let their skin sag rather than pay a plastic surgyeon to fix up their business. Tits, tummies, butts, and faces are going untucked, unsucked, and unenhanced. Across the country, some cosmetic docs have seen a 30% drop in their earnings. “With this latest fiasco [on Wall Street], many are probably down closer to 40 percent,” said Sacramento surgeon and president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, Dr. Patrick McMenamin. Sounds like America is going au natural!  In these tough times, we’re all going to have to work with what we got. [MSNBC]

Wednesday’s episode of The Colbert Report had a segment about MyFreeImplants.com, a website started by Jason Grunstra which “brings together two groups of people: women that have a strong desire to enhance their physical appearance through cosmetic surgery and benefactors who wish to help these women improve their self esteem and confidence through cosmetic surgery.” Clearly, men have been giving their money to silly charities like St. Jude’s and OxFam for far too long. You know, it is so unfortunate that women don’t have a similar charity to contribute to which provides men with the cosmetic surgeries of their dreams. Is the URL “SizeDoesMatter.com” available? [Comedy Central]

Joan Rivers, a big fan of Botox, is poking fun at herself and laughing all the way to the bank in a new Geico commercial.  While it may give you a career, a new report shows the wrinkle reducer could make you loose more than just facial expressions—it’s a look that can kill. The popular cosmetic injection is made from the botulinum toxin, the same bacterium that poisons meat, has in many cases spread through patients’ bodies wreaking all sorts of havoc. Since Botox has been linked to 16 deaths and almost 100 users hospitalization, Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, is asking the FDA to review the trendy disease…er, skin care substance put out by the pharmaceutical company Allergan. Looks like there’s an even uglier side to this beauty product. [Reuters]