The Secret of Beauty? a Wonky Smile

Byline: by Alice Hart Davis

AS THE popularity of cosmetic surgery continues to rise, we ask four leading plastic surgeons how they view the elusive notion of beauty. Are they arbiters of modern beauty or just reflecting back to us how we would ideally like to see ourselves? Rajiv Grover CONSULTANT plastic surgeon at King Edward VII Hospital in London. He has a private practice in Harley Street and is president-elect of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. TECHNICALLY, what makes a face beautiful is symmetry and a strong central 'facial triangle' with bright, wide eyes, proportionate lips and minimal distracting features.

If you look at Andy Warhol's silkscreen prints of famous faces, you will see that all he shows is the eyes, the lips and tiny dots to represent the nose. By emphasising just these, he automatically made the faces he worked with beautiful.

But it is not usually my own concept of beauty that comes into play when treating patients. As a surgeon, I have to make sure that I am not putting my sense of values onto them. I need to discover what they perceive to be their problem in order to see …

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Publication information: Article title: The Secret of Beauty? a Wonky Smile. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Daily Mail (London). Publication date: April 11, 2011. Page number: 48. © 2007 Daily Mail. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.

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