Since its inception, the public has decried plastic surgery as a vapid and vain vice, something that somehow perverts our culture and goes against nature. This is becoming less and less the case however; while this can be viewed as a simple progression by the public away from outmoded judgments and social norms, it is just as much an evolution of the craft, and those who practice it. One especially cogent example of this is liposuction. Where ten years ago the mere mention of liposuction conjured images of morbidly obese people getting their fat sucked out with a drumstick in one hand and a piece of cake in the other, ready to get themselves right back where they began, liposuction is beginning to be seen as a stepping stone in cases of extreme obesity.

While there will always be people looking for an easy fix, many physicians are starting to see that liposuction can be much more than just a way to squeeze into a swimsuit for a week in the Bahamas; it can be the turn-around point for the morbidly obese. The problem with obesity is that it’s a lot like debt; as you dig yourself into an overly high caloric intake, adding more mass to your body, it becomes more and more difficult to move yourself to exercise. As any physician will tell you, diet is exactly half the battle. If you’re not burning any of the calories you intake, you’re still not going to see any improvement in your body mass.

Physicians were stuck at this problem for a while, even while many of them eschewed the "quick-fix" mentality that liposuction seemed to promise: "No diet, no exercise, so what? You can still be thin if we suck your fat out with this hose!" Many physicians however have now realized that by giving someone liposuction, you are giving them something that diet alone could not; the ability to move. You still have to be careful about it of course. Many physicians will try to make their patients get acclimated to a low-calorie diet before the liposuction to ensure a proper causal link in the patients mind; namely that they’re not just at their goal weight because of technology, they’re at their goal weight because they worked at it, and now they need to start exercising to stay there.

Finally legitimate medicine and plastic surgery are being married into each other, with less and less plastic surgeries being made with complete ignorance of someone’s general health. Even beyond the example of liposuction, plastic surgeons are being much more ethical in who to perform plastic surgery on based on factors like blood pressure, and even someone’s psychological state. Gone are the days of reckless hack-and-slash jobs; plastic surgeons can nowadays be viewed as doctors.