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The problem with cosmetic surgery is that people who have it can only see how they look in the mirror. They don't realise how weird they look from other angles. I particularly hate the injections that puff out the face, which are hideous.

The truth is that much of the plastic surgery we see today has a racial or ethnic component because it has to do with inherently racial concepts of physical perfection, like the 'Roman nose.'

I was asked by an NPR reporter once why don't I talk about race that often. I said, 'It's because I'm a neurosurgeon.' And she thought that was a strange response... I said, 'You see, when I take someone to the operating room, I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn't make them who they are.'

I don't think there is anything wrong with cosmetic surgery at all. I think it's great. But I don't think it's alright to distort yourself.

Vanity is not having facelifts if you're ugly. Those people who say: 'Oh, I'd never dream of having anything done!' That's rude. It's rude, to other people, to not try and look your best; to not try and stir things up, to not reinvent... or just invent... it's one's duty to not get stuffy.

My greatest fear about a world in which racial reassignment surgery becomes common is that it then becomes an expression of all kinds of class privilege. You have a truly dystopian society divided between the people who can afford to be racially altered and perfected and the ones who can't.

If somebody doesn't have enough judgment to be able to look at plastic surgery and realize how phony it is, then they can't be helped.

I think it's a little irresponsible for women who choose surgery to then say they can portray the average woman on the street, because if the average woman can't afford those treatments, then she's going to say, 'I'm 53 and I don't look like that,' and start thinking she's ugly or inadequate.

I don't think badly of or oppose having plastic surgery. I once seriously thought of it, but I decided to take my appearance as it is.