Plastic Surgery: This Year’s Hot Christmas Gift?
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Keith Brofsky/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Tina Franklin and Nicole Tuzzolino are each other’s best friends and sisters, so each always knows what the other wants for Christmas.
“Clothes and accessories,” Tuzzolino, of Ladera Ranch, Calif., said of what she usually gives her older sister, Franklin.
“Maybe some old pictures of us growing up,” Franklin, from Costa Mesa, Calif., said of what she typically gives her younger sister.
But this year, even Tuzzolino, 33, was surprised by what was at the top of her 41-year-old sister’s Christmas wish list: Botox.
“To be honest, I think she’s a little crazy,” Tuzzolino told ABC’s Good Morning America. “I don’t think she needs it, but I know that she’s been wanting it, and it makes her happy.”
Franklin, the owner of a Southern California bridal makeup company, says she needed a pick-me-up after recently breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, and Botox was the perfect answer.
“I’m getting Botox done around on the crow’s feet around my eyes,” she said. “That’s what I notice the most, between the brows, and then on the forehead.”
Franklin is putting her face in the hands of Newport Beach, Calif., plastic surgeon Dr. Tenley Lawton, who says she is staying increasingly busy this year as women in the Orange County area she serves ask for, and receive, plastic surgery as Christmas gifts.
“For a simple injectable, it could be as low as a few hundred dollars,” Lawton told GMA of the price range for the types of plastic surgery requests she sees over the holidays.
“If we’re talking about a full mommy makeover, which could include a tummy tuck and a breast lift or a breast augmentation, it could be anywhere between $7,000 and $15,000,” she said.
There were 11.5 million cosmetic procedures performed on women in North America in 2010, up 81 percent from 10 years ago, according to figures compiled by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for its 2010 Plastic Surgery Statistics report.
All told, Americans spent $10.1 billion on cosmetic procedures last year alone, according to the report
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