Word: rio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Retreats in Rio...
Security and peace of mind, according to an old Brazilian adage, is a strong house, a tame horse and an ugly wife. If the maxim still applies, Rio de Janeiro is a less secure place today. For the former capital of Brazil has become a world capital of the plastic-surgery industry, and ugly wives by the hundreds are being remolded into well-proportioned visions of beauty. The deft use of vanity surgery, as the Brazilians call it, has provided women who flock in from all over the world with new faces, larger (or smaller) bosoms, slimmer hips and even...
Vanity surgery is now as acceptable in Rio as bleach-blonde hair. One local television personality, Dercy Gonçalves, who has been thoroughly reshaped, is not in the least reluctant to discuss it. She has been known to close her TV program by cheerily confiding, "Well, next week I'm going to have a complete retread." Once, when she appeared on camera looking younger and trimmer than usual, she announced that casual sit-down chats with guest stars would be out of the question for the next few days. "I've had three operations on my face...
Replaced Navels. Very popular in Rio is the Pitanguy nose (cute, petite and slightly upturned) and Sophia Loren eyes (almond shaped). The latest rage is carving clefts into chins or, for those whose chins are already cleft, smoothing out the cleft. Much of Pitanguy's time is spent sculpting bustlines into more sedate proportions. "Brazil has more big breasts than anywhere else in the world," he explains. Whether the breasts are expanded or contracted, however, they remain functional after Pitanguy's alterations: milk flow is unimpaired, and nipples are normally positioned. The doctor is also known...
...work earns him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year-in a country where a first-class brain or heart surgeon can expect to earn only $50,000. But Pitanguy has demonstrated time and again that he is not greedy. He spends Wednesdays operating for free at Rio's General Hospital. In the tradition of most doctors, who soak the rich and salve the poor, Pitanguy donates his services to the maimed and the malformed, whether they can pay or not. "I'll give you a price," he told one American who came to get his deformed ears...