TV PREVIEW
“Atlanta Plastic,” 10 p.m. Fridays, Lifetime
Plastic surgery shows have occasionally dotted the reality show landscape over the past decade. Most notable are E!’s “Dr. 90210” and the current hit E! show “Botched,” where plastic surgeons fix messed-up past procedures.
Lifetime is taking a different angle with "Atlanta Plastic," debuting at 10 p.m. Friday. It features three local black plastic surgeons, two based in Kennesaw and one in Buckhead.
The show focuses on minorities seeking plastic surgery and touches upon differing beauty standards among races. Each episode follows three patients (one for each doctor) from consultation to post operation.
All three doctors said they’ve been pitched reality programs many times and said no just as many times.
“I usually hang up on them,” said Dr. Marcus Crawford, a Morehouse College grad who has run Crawford Plastic Surgery in Kennesaw for the past seven years.
Dr. Aisha McKnight-Baron — a Spelman grad who received her medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine and works with Crawford — avoided shows like Bravo’s “Married to Medicine” because she didn’t want cameras following her personal life.
Dr. Wright Jones, who has a Buckhead practice overlooking Lenox Square mall and did residencies at Emory University and Grady Hospital, said yes this time because he liked the concept.
But he wanted to make it clear he doesn’t exclude white patients: “I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a black surgeon. I want to be known as a great surgeon who happens to be black.”
The number of blacks who are plastic surgeons is relatively small, the three doctors say, but hard data is difficult to come by. Neither the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery nor the American Society of Plastic Surgeons tracks that type of demographic information.
But the American Society of Plastic Surgeons tracks customers by race. African-Americans did 1.2 million procedures, or 8 percent of the total number, in 2013.
Between 2005 and 2013, the group estimates the number of cosmetic procedures performed on blacks jumped 56 percent compared to 35 percent for non-Hispanic whites. Procedures on Asians and Hispanics grew even faster than both.
The first episode features a middle-aged black woman named Roz seeking a breast lift, liposuction, a tummy tuck and vaginal reconstruction. She specifically sought out McKnight-Baron. “Having an African-American woman as my surgeon is important to me,” she said on the show. “I feel she can relate to me. She understands my skin. She understands my body.”
To McKnight-Baron, who has been a plastic surgeon for two years, the goal is to improve people’s quality of life. “You can rebuild a woman and restore her confidence,” she said.
Indeed, by the end, Roz said: “I feel so pretty, I could kiss myself!”
Another black woman, Tiffany, had a child when she was young and never liked her stomach, especially after four kids. She avoided bikinis. “It would mean getting back my body, something I deserve after all those pregnancies,” she said before surgery. “I know a lot of mothers would agree.”
Crawford gave her a tummy tuck and a breast lift, and by the end of the episode, she was posing in a bikini.
While Jones admitted TV exposure may help his business, that was not his primary reason to do the show.
“I didn’t really need this,” he said. “But maybe the show can motivate others. It can help educate patients about ethnic plastic surgery.”
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