From 50 Cent to 1 Pound on the BBC

Tuning in to BBC

Let’s just take a break from this tummy upset that has overstayed its welcome and seek a sense of mirth that I apparently missed in the news until it appeared on one of those American night talk shows.

Perfection Plastic Surgery and MedSpa is the business of Angela Kogan who amongst other things does help put the long in schlong quite perfectly, or so it seems. For that, she has gained some notoriety and a lawsuit, because she has in her promotional material suggested 50 Cent (Now to be known as 1 Pound in the light of the crash of the Pound Sterling), was a client. [Independent: 50 Cent suing Miami doctor for allegedly suggesting rapper had penis enlargement surgery]

There is a picture of them together somewhere and the inference from 50 Cent is that she has suggested that he tuned in to the BBC. I cannot say how many channels can be tuned into, but this public display of phallic endowment and the disputations that follow can quite easily lead respectable blogs like mine into the abyss of tawdry lewdness.

Please, don’t

Now, if this does make it to court, I doubt the core aspects of discovery would be limited to proving whether 50 Cent was a client, for anyone with serious legal chops would be expected to ascertain if indeed there has been an enhancement whether cosmetic or radical and who might in his history have tuned the knobs on his television to watch more than a live performance on the BBC.

I adjure anyone who reads and listens, please, go to court on anything and everything, but never on the premise of submitting your manhood as evidence, it never has a happy ending, regardless of what you are packing. At best, frighten the living daylights out of her and find a settlement, for you will never be able to sustain an objection when the jury is curious.

If I recall, this blog did once find a doctor offering these same services, it is heartening to know that both male and female specialists are in the game to ensure that the result is fit for purpose, whatever, that might be.

Blog - Hello Dr Dick, my friends need a ... (2015)

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

[]

Talking hair is not cheap

Hair is politics, or should I say political. It is also commercial, it is big business. Yet, it is quite personal, the choice of expression with or without hair is interesting and sometimes just left to the observation.

Then, you come to the real issue, the one of hair for black women. I was walking down the road on Boulevard de Strasbourg, just after the Saint Laurent Catholic Church on the left, before the street changes to Boulevard de Sebastopol and I observed something I had not seen before.

There were men stood in front of shops accosting women and doing everything to persuade them to come into the shops, black women that is, and these shops had dangling from every window and hook as you peered in from the shop windows and the doors, hair of every dark shade, ready to be used as augmentation of natural hair.

How long has this been going on?

Now, I have seen architectural works of the hair that I cannot fathom how much skill and time it has taken to put those creations on the heads of the wearers and they do not come cheap by any stretch of the imagination.

I have written of this section of Paris before, both sides of the street teeming like an African ghetto that even I feel too much of an outsider to be able to relate. Literally, every shop sells hair and cosmetics, and as they are all selling the same things, you do wonder about what makes each shop unique as competition is brisk, if not cutthroat, you probably need men to literally muscle in the customer off the street.

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

Travelled the world and the seven hairs

The hair, however, is a different story, having travelled off the shorn heads of poor people from the hinterland of Brazil and India, the hair has become the travelled dream of people who probably would never see miles beyond their locality for a lifetime.

The profits from these lengths of follicular fancy would hardly get to them. That is absorbed somewhere in the value chain by people who have probably become billionaires in the purveyance of this fleeting enhancement to beauty.

I would not know if there is a fair-trade hair construct that ensures a bit more of the profits of this arbitrage goes back to the source communities of the hair. That is another element of the opacity of capitalism.

Where’s the shampoo?

I guess for me, the only hair product I use is a razor and shaving gel if that counts as hair products. I shave my head just while I shave my beard, or whatever those itchy bristles are. It was funny and cheeky when my friend as he was using the shower ventured then declined. He then said he could not ask me for something I basically could not have. Shampoo!

That is another story. The trade in hair is about to get nasty and it is in the pulling of customers rather than of their hair.

Like TLC does say, “You can buy your hair if it won’t grow.”

Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty

An observation

Walking up Boulevard de Strasbourg towards Gare de l’Est Station, I could not help but notice amongst the bijou restaurants and cafes along with the decrepit but expensive hotels that would hardly elicit a 2-star rating on any self-respecting booking site, the ethnic homogeneity of people and shops.

Whilst I would not venture the suggestion of African town as a corollary to Chinatown, most of the shops had something to do with hair, cosmetics and some fashion.

The barbers and there were a few, and much as I should resist the temptation to get into the Afro hair wars, an observation of this sort must not be left unattended to.

Changing the African

Now, the shops had all manner of paints and colours, makeup to make scary clowns of otherwise beautiful and comely people. The matter of hair extensions is another thing, not one lady of African ancestry appears to sport natural hair.

No braids, no plaits, rather, we all happen to have hair like Caucasians will have their hair, relaxed, long and falling over the shoulders, most black and at times melanin-deficient brown. It is not like I should have much to say about hair, from the moment I noticed male-pattern baldness, I have shaved my head rather than exercise myself over the loss of hair.

The unpretty angst

This is inexpensive for me, considering I shave it just when I have my regular shaves and the occasional scrapes that take fillets of skin off my scalp that the pain gives that unusual opportunity to shed a tear or two.

Beyond hair, the skin is toned and despite that tendency to scarring some have resorted to cosmetic surgery with varying results, and that is not to say of those who have paid the ultimate price enhancing their boobs, buttocks or looks. When are we going to feel secure and comfortable in our own skins?

It goes without saying that we have bought into a mindset that creates a fashion industry exploiting the predominant view that naturally, we are somewhat unpretty. Yet, we must all choose the look that makes us most confident about ourselves, even if it is not natural, that is one of the amazing things about the resourcefulness of our humanity. However, the greatest beauty will always be on the inside.

TLC – Take it away!

Blog: Paris: Boulevard de l'Unpretty - Revisited.

Nigeria: Surgeon in Stella Obasanjo Death Jailed

News from Spain

It was almost 4 years ago in my hotel room in Antwerp that I heard of a plane crash in Nigeria, and as the pundits speculated and postulated about what might have happened, additional sad news [1] came on air announcing the death of the wife of the President, Mrs Stella Obasanjo.

What made the news a bit suspicious was that she died in Spain; that was quite unusual for a Nigerian seeking medical treatment to end up in Spain when Germany and the United Kingdom were the usual luxury health locations.

A quick Google search for Marbella and surgery turned up an interesting development: the dear lady was in Spain for cosmetic surgery, which supposedly was to showcase herself as perfect for her 60^th birthday in a few weeks.

The dangers are real

Cosmetic surgery, however, has its dangers [2], much as programmes as Dr. 90210 almost trivialise the procedures that people seem to walk in and out of the clinics as if they have gone for a facial and manicure, these procedures are intrusive and just as critically risky as serious medical operations.

One does sometimes wonder if there is enough duty of care, monitoring and professionalism in the cosmetic surgery business for beauty rather than serious medical need.

The case of Mrs Obasanjo seems to have highlighted that issue where the surgeon has now been jailed [3] for carelessness and neglect, struck off for three years and ordered to pay $176,000 to Mrs Obasanjo’s son.

This,  however, cannot be any consolation for the loss and, worse still, for what agony and excruciating pain she might have suffered as the surgeon failed to appreciate the urgency of her condition until it was too late.

Negligence in a foreign land

She had undergone a liposuction procedure, which left the tube puncturing her colon and lacerating her liver. The doctor was not on call for hours as her state deteriorated, and when he finally became available, she was rushed to the hospital in his car rather than in an ambulance.

It is likely that Mrs Obasanjo might have visited Spain secretly for this procedure and therefore did not have at her beck and call all the due courtesies that might have accompanied such an important personality; being in a strange place with careless surgeons administering intrusive treatments must be scary enough for anyone.

In the end, the lessons are clear that seeking medical treatment abroad is not enough if proper attention is not paid to the quality of care expected for paying for such a service, that cosmetic surgery is no trivial matter, and that foreign doctors can expect to be nabbed by the long arms of the law where their professionalism is questionable.

The question remains whether that procedure was really necessary at all.

Sources

[1] Giving news a picture [akin.blog-city.com]

[2] Cosmetic surgery poses dangers [akin.blog-city.com]

[3] BBC NEWS | Europe | Doctor jailed for Obasanjo death

Cosmetic surgery poses dangers

Death from surgery complications

Just over two years ago, I was in Antwerp when the newsflash arrived of the tragedy of an air crash in Nigeria that the first lady of Nigeria, Mrs Stella Obasanjo, had died as a result of complications of surgery.

What I found a bit odd was that she died in Spain, which is not known for patient tourism of the sort that wealthy Nigerians undertake with regularity at the simplest sign of a sweat.

A quick Google search for “surgery Spain” indicated that it was a haven for cosmetic surgery, and it was quite saddening that a lady of privilege who seemingly had everything had decided there was something lacking about her appearance that she went under the knife and suffered a death by misadventure.

So, it is with additional sadness again that I read now from Barcelona of the death on Saturday of Dr Donda West (58), the mother of Kanye West, a successful contemporary music producer and artiste.

Now, I am not in any way conversant with Kanye West’s music, and I am not indicating that the case of Dr West has any similarity to that of Mrs Obasanjo, apart from the coincidence of both of them dying from complications resulting from a “cosmetic procedure”.

Whatever might have prompted the need for this procedure, Dr West was by all means a very successful academic who, until 2004, when she retired to manage her son’s interests, was a professor and the chair of the Chicago State University English Department.

Cosmetic surgery is inherently dangerous

The subtext here is that cosmetic surgery or procedures are not benign activities like brushing your teeth, but sometimes radical, intrusive activities that carry the risk of complications that could so unfortunately, lead to the loss of life.

It worries me when I channel-hop and land on an episode of Dr. 90210 where the flamboyance of cosmetic procedures has been given a bizarre Hollywood treatment, like walking into a shop to get a dress or a pair of shoes.

People who are naturally good-looking and beautiful have gotten it into their heads that their beauty is not perfected till they have been cut, spliced, tucked, sucked or lifted to look and feel better in a never-ending visit to these debauched vanity merchants who have taken the work surgery to another level of hedonistic excess that could in and of itself invite the spectre of Nemesis.

It gets perverse and unhealthy when shows like Extreme Makeover (broadcast in 18 countries) capture the imagination of those who think their low self-esteem can be overturned by externalised amelioration,  which includes plastic surgery and a change of wardrobe rather than a substantive realignment of perspective through education and long-term mentoring.

Another spotlight from the past

The stories we never hear of are of those butchered into a repose and serenity from which they would never awake.

In 2004, the author of First Wives Club, Olivia Goldsmith (54), died from a heart attack whilst under anaesthetic for a procedure which would have involved removing excess skin under her chin – it highlighted with a bit of media feeding frenzy the inherent risks of elective cosmetic surgery.

This not to say that there no successes and sometimes lucky escapes or angelic moments to these procedures – many would say their procedure was worth every penny and boosted their self-confidence amongst all other positive outcomes – but where vanity rather than medical impetus drives and defines the need for surgery, if the consequences are dire, one becomes the more fool for it all and sadly so.

Remembering those who died

Beyond the foreboding and sharp intake of breath that should accompany every specific decision to go under the knife for a cosmetic procedure and the sense of satisfaction that one anticipates after the success of such an activity, we must, with all the deepest sympathy, remember those who never got that far.

It is with this heart that I express my sorrow for those who have lost loved ones and in this case, Kanye West, and pray that they receive strength, courage and fortitude to bear their loss and gain comfort from the joys of having known and fellowshipped with people whose memory and remembrance would never fade, though they be departed, they are never gone.

References

Giving news a picture - October 2005

Plastic Surgery 101: Obesity

Two women's plastic surgery success stories - The Denver Business Journal

Unpeeling Cosmetic Surgery's Glossy Surface