More Patients Undoing Nips and Tucks

Thousands are feeling a little too "cookie-cutter" with their new nipped noses and tucked chins, one doctor says—so they're ponying up for surgery to look like (gasp!) themselves again. These 'undo-plasties' are becoming big business; some doctors spend half their time as "revision plastic surgeons." Even stars like Courtney Love, Jenna Jameson, and Julio Iglesias have admitted to undoing surgery or hating what they got.

Many out-patients complain of looking "like they had been trapped in a wind tunnel," one surgeon admits, but a psychotherapist says it runs deeper: One's "authentic self" can be traumatized by plastic surgery. Feelings of "internal discontent" and "deep grief" often follow. So do pangs of cost outlay—the Chicago Tribune follows one woman who paid triple her surgery price to unfix a new nose, which whistled whenever she breathed. (More plastic surgery stories.)