Our annual Most Worth It list recognizes the most-loved aesthetic procedures—from noninvasive tweaks to the gold standard in surgery—as chosen by RealSelf community members like you. This story highlights one or more of the 44 Most Worth It honorees for 2022; you can see the full list and learn more about patients’ favorite procedures here.
Judy is a 65-year-old woman living in Central Pennsylvania. When her daughter, now 34, was in college, she paid for her otoplasty and liposuction. Debra is a 68-year-old woman living in Los Angeles who paid for her now 30-year-old daughter’s rhinoplasty at 16. These are their stories, as told to Alix Tunell, edited for length and clarity.
Judy’s story
My daughter was so self-conscious about her ears sticking out, starting in middle school and all throughout high school. I don’t know that anybody ever made fun of her for it, but people were quick to notice. When she was in college, I decided to get her otoplasty, to have them pinned back. I just thought, You know what? If I can do this for her at this time in her life, especially when she knows her ears are not naturally going to come back more in line because that’s just the way she was made, then I want to do that.
She also wanted to have some liposuction done on her inner thighs and the fat pads above her hips, at the same time as the ear procedure. I have a family full of women who are all really thin, but the insides of our thighs have this fat pocket on each side that she inherited. The surgeon noticed right away and said it’d be a really easy fix. I funded those surgeries for her because I knew exactly where she was coming from and what an improvement it would make.
There were absolutely no stipulations around [me paying for it] whatsoever. I just made her read all about the surgeries and aftercare protocols and agree to abide by them. This was more than a decade ago, before RealSelf, so it was very difficult to gather as much personalized information as you can now. Most of the information was clinical and there weren’t a whole lot of first-person experiences being reported, but we covered the bases as best we could and chose an amazing plastic surgeon who had also operated on my sisters. I paid around $4,500.
We kept the surgeries between us girls—I don’t think her brothers even knew that she got anything done and that I paid for it. I don’t think the guy she was dating at the time, who is now her husband, knew either. I was with her the whole time, in the waiting room and during recovery, and it was a great experience for us. She was thrilled by the results, and so was I. She felt she could wear certain hairstyles that she never could before, when she was always trying to hide her ears. And she has very sleek legs now—I wish I’d done it to mine, in fact. Overall, it was pretty life-changing for her.
I think that if your child knows themselves well and approaches things in a logical, mature way, it’s worth hearing them out and listening, if they want plastic surgery. If you can financially swing it, I say do it—because it won’t be money poorly spent, if it’s coming from the heart. Of course, if your child is frivolous and ping-pongs with trends and things like that, this probably would require a little extra wisdom, but I’ve always felt that my daughter has impeccable judgment. I credited her with having full knowledge of what she wanted at the time, so it wasn’t a hard decision for me to give her that gift.
Debra’s story
My daughter started talking about not liking her nose when she was 13 or 14. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it—while it was large, it was proportionate to her face—but she hated the small bump on the bridge and the bulbous tip. She’d point it out in photos and make comments every so often, though she wasn’t unhealthily obsessed with it or anything.
When she was 16, she got really into Dr. 90210 and researched all the plastic surgeons on it. [Beverly Hills, California, facial plastic surgeon] Dr. Raj Kanodia was the nose job guy—he does closed, scarless rhinoplasties at his practice and nothing else. He’d [reportedly] just done a bunch of celebrities at the time too. My daughter really wanted a consultation with him, and she didn’t have to do much convincing—there was no question in my mind that he was great.
My parents had paid for my own nose job at 17, and I was happy with the results, so that’s another reason I didn’t need to think too hard about booking a consultation. When we met with Dr. Kanodia, I was immediately won over—he seemed really, really capable and competent and answered all my questions. My big worry was that her nose might dip down in the front—I’ve seen that happen with a lot of people who get their noses done—but he assured me that he absolutely hated that look and it wouldn’t be an issue.
We booked the surgery for Christmas break—she was 16, just about to turn 17. It was very expensive, I believe around $12,000, but I thought it was worth it to go to the best. It just seemed so important to my daughter and she hadn’t wavered in wanting this for years, so this was a gift I wanted to give her. I knew what it was like to be that age and hate your nose.
Before she got surgery, she didn’t want me to tell anyone, so I kept it a secret. But afterward, she told the extended family and everyone at school and was very open about it. I actually thought that she went from having more of an interesting, exotic nose and looking very striking to looking more traditionally pretty, but she loved the results and I was just pleased that she was happy.
A few months later, her cousin got a nose job from a different doctor, then two of her best friends at school got theirs done by Dr. Kanodia, so it’s not that unusual a thing to do at that age, in L.A. Her generation doesn’t seem to feel like there’s stigma or shame around plastic surgery.
