Under the Knife
Louis Theroux travels out to Los Angeles to check out the world of plastic surgery, where breast enhancements, tummy tucks, muscle implants and the like are common procedures.
Spending time in the surgeries of several plastic surgeons, Louis meets the doctors who carry out the operations and the people who feel they need work – whether it is a man looking to make his muscles look larger or a woman preparing to undergo surgery as part of improving her life. On this occasion though, Louis also undergoes a procedure himself to experience it firsthand.
If anyone else decided to have surgery as part of a film about plastic surgery I would be very cynical and assume the worst but I think Louis Theroux is unlikely to be accused of cheap tricks or gimmicks. Mostly he does a good job of getting in with his subjects and bringing them out in front of the cameras; one could accuse him of manipulating them perhaps but I think that is too harsh a description.
Here he does enough away from the gimmick of having liposuction to justify it as quite a small part of the show. The rest is interesting if not fascinating. Naturally the patients make for the most interesting scenes and some of them are curious and quite sad. Some are easy targets but Theroux's soft touch prevents it feeling like he is getting at them.
. Plastic surgery to get your man back, All I can say is wow! This woman needs to sit down with a psychologist and talk about her self esteem issues. And a man telling her she's reached her full potential and their relationship is now improved, that dude for 1. is a complete puke 2. a f*cking *ss hole and a pig. I can't believe the lengths some women would go to just to keep a man. Digusting
The fact that these people who got plastic surgery think they look flawless now are delusional. The enhancements are extremely noticeable far from a natural look.
That receptionist looks soo trashy....all the makeup and the low cut shirts...I know its a surgeons office but it's still a professional medical office.....she looks awful.
I understand havign small tweaks here and there-but if you're just too lazy to work out so you get bicept inmplants of liposuction, get real. It's an insult to the rest of us who work hard every day to stay in shape. The funny thing is, everyone in this video who's had tons of surgery looks ridiculous...that steve guy looked hilarious...lauras image consultant looked severly plastic....what is wrong with people!
I'm glad Louis pointed out Steve Ehrhardt's pecs, they're dangerously close to breasts...
Laura may think she's better off now that she looks better on the outside, but that guy is not worth it. If he wasn't interested in her before and now he is because she went and changed her looks through surgery he was never really interested in HER. Also Laura still has emotional issues which can't be improved through surgery. Those will come back to haunt her eventually and then what will happen? More surgery?
That personal coach of hers creeps me out. The coach tries to 'help' her by convincing Laura that she needs to change her looks but most guys will agree that confidence trumps looks pretty much all the time. She looked just fine before. If she had had more confidence she would never have needed that surgery.
happiness and peace come from with in. these people are the victims of out shallow culture. free yous self from mental slavery!
Some of these people are super lazy and crazy.
-> I can understand boob-jobs, you can't get that through exercise or diet.
-> I can understand nose-jobs, those make sense to me
But a lot of the dumbtards who got stuff like lipo or pec and bicep implants, wtf?
The guy with all the muscle implants looked worse than what he could have if he had spent a few years lifting weights. I mean, I could understand going under the knife if he a) wanted unnaturally big muscles b) he wants to get those unnaturally big muscles without using steroids.
But most of the people doing muscle implants only get muscles that are very easily achievable through weight-lifting. Heck, you can get that amount of muscle by just lifting for 10 mins in the morning AT HOME with weights that fit under your bed.
The receptionist doing LIPO? WTHF? She's seriouslly mentally challenged. She says she "tried situps and couldn't get it off". If she did even 5 minutes of googling, she'd know that situps don't remove fat. She couldn't do 5 minutes of research, but she goes under the knife?
If she also did research, she'd know that lipo only removes fat temporarily. If you eat the way you did, the body will eventually put fat there again.She freaking tried to remove fat doing freaking situps (instead of studying caloric restriction and bodyfat levels)... I can't believe these lazy bums.
God bless Louis, going under the knife shows how he tries to gain an understanding of all sides in his docus.
surely the surgeons know as they have studied physiology at some point in their career that to have a well defined chest you WILL have had to do press ups or bench press - some activity where your tricepts would have grown/toned up in a similar proportion - making your arms bigger.
So to give a man chest implants to look like muslce is nothing more than a con. Also the same with bicepts, you WILL train your forearms while doing any kind of bicept work, so it just looks ridiculous to have bicepts and chest mass without anything else. Infact he probably looked better before - now he looks like he is in the process of a sex change taking estrogen, or maybe has an underlying genetic condition in the sex chromosomes
This whole thing disturbs me so much! They all look like horrible aliens.
As more beautiful gender, ladies do go more often then we do!, I mean - males. I can understand that but please, in my opinion at least 75% gets hooked really serious!
It is a plastic drug, no doubt, in the western hemisphere especially! ... and so on ... I mean, I have a little bit of a wider nose but I don't wanna to fix it!
Hack NO!!! At least... not yet.
Laura needs a spine!!! That man that she was putting herself in danger over will eventually leave her again. These women need to get a grip.
Also, these plastic surgeons like to spew pure sh** out of their mouths. Not one surgeon had something intelligent or sincere to say. They just want money and these idiots are forking it over.
Plastic surgery is addictive, not to unlike tattoos.
Ultimately beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. Los Angeles should never be the measuring stick from which the rest of the country should measure themselves.
And Louie, about the nose job ... not such a bad a idea..LOL
We love u Louie!
i cant believe the crap that 2000 dollar a day lady was spouting about that girl finally getting to be "herself" and happy being who "she really is".
WOW
talk about preying on the weak.she is a predator.
-haha Louis is the man
There's a happy medium for everything. If there is one specific thing about your face, body, w/e that bothers the hell out of you and you happen to have a big wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, what the hell, go get a nose job or lipo or whatever.
The problem is when you believe that you can achieve physical perfection... there will always be some little thing you can tweak if you look hard enough. The other issue that appears to be pretty consistent among some of these people in this video is that they have underlying emotional issues that seem to be influencing their decision. If you don't address the underlying issue, you will never feel ok about your body, regardless of how many procedures you have.
But, at the end of the day, the people who choose to get these procedures are adults and they're capable of making their own decisions. If they earned the money and they're cool with blowing $50k on plastic man-boobs and whatnot, have at it... Personally, I find the obsessive and manipulative side of the industry as somewhere between pathetic and revolting. There's a reason I have no interest in living in or near Beverly Hills.
Really captivating doc, full of interesting characters and bull called out by reason. Standard Theroux fare, and I mean that as a high compliment. Really something to see a probing interview of a surgeon carried out during the probing surgery of the interviewer!
I disagree with mostly everything that has made this industry lucrative, but that image consultant witch was the only person in this doc that really made me angry. Taking emotionally fragile women, manipulating them with insincere psych tricks into believing they need you to make them worthwhile, abusing their bodies and minds, and overcharging them for it is sleazy pimp "work". I would feel no more remorse about punching this woman in her fake face than I would beating her male equivalent, and hope someone closer to her feels the same.
The thing about plastic surgery to me is what is rarely reported because it doesn't happen as often. You can die on an operating table. When that happens would you wish you could have reversed your decision to be so perfect about your looks or would it just be those you left behind. I'm in favor of something surgical for inhibiting things like your eyelids drooping and covering up your sight but the rest I can't get on board for. Those last few comments that Dr. made kind of showed he didn't think it was all neccessary. Don't some of our imperfections make us look like... well us. If everyone got the perfect nose, the perfect body, the perfect face then yes we are then clones and what makes one prettier than the other. Expected him to chicken out but he went for it, surprised there so it did deliver.
@Maria indeed that is one ugly breast implant...
Male should not get breast implants, it looks like they do in fact have breast!
Seriously the woman that got her man back because she looks "beautiful" now is so sad... what a douche her man is... her problems are not on the outside they are obviously self esteem issues that this guy has helped in developing.. she needs a new man not a new look even though she does look great.. not forgetting the woman that has been "helping" her pick out her new outfit and her new look.. what kind of a person is that? geez!! i have a very hard time accepting plastic surgery, maybe when i'm old and saggy i would get it but i still feel that every age has it's beauty.. and you can't just walk life half assing it.. you want to look good exercise eat right...
I feel sorry for that lady who got her "man" back because of these surgeries. It is more than obvious that the "man" in question was highly superficial.
The guys with pec and bicep implants look like they have boobs. If they got them the hard way, lift weights, they'd have muscles all over their upper bodies. You can't just implant "muscles" into one area and expect them to look natural.
It's amazing how Louis is under the knife and he's still in "journalistic" mode.
Louis is an exceptional journalist.
Self mutilation as a form of aesthetic enhancement can be found throughout human history.