Perk & Work.(plastic surgery)

Byline: Photographed by Mario Testino

The audaciously augmented American body, Sally Singer argues, is fashion's latest challenge.

If you've ever been to a yoga class on the Westside of Los Angeles, you'll have noticed that Newtonian physics apparently needs to be revised: Apples may still drop from trees, but breastsindeed, buttocksno longer obey gravity. Downward dog just isn't so downward anymore. Rather than rewrite the history of human thought, it may be sufficient to add to our list of common body types: Welcome the Worked Body.

We're talking about a physique that has had work done to it by others, and has been worked out by its owner. A body that has subtlyor not so subtlysubmitted to a new technological aesthetic. Only recently has it become possible (and normal) for, say, a 40-year-old figure to have impossibly slender thighs, an impossibly flat stomach, and impossibly perky breasts. But it's not just an antiaging strategy; it's a fundamentally different idea of what is beautiful and what is natural. With advances in medical procedures, fatalism (i.e., you work with the body that nature gave you) has given way to a different idea: You work the body that nature gave you. We can all be Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science, except that the science isn't weird anymore.

Manufactured bodies are everywhere now, but we first saw them in music videos and on the red carpet. Ken Downing, fashion director of Neiman Marcus, says, "When you watch the Golden Globes, there they are in front of you, front and center. It's more driven by Hollywood than by fashion. Fashion was slow to pick up on the enormous number of women who have these enhanced figures." Says Zac Posen: "If a woman can afford designer clothing, then, in America, she's designed her body."

And if she lives in South Florida, Southern California, or Dallas (the hot spots in every sense), the chances are she's designed her body even if she shops at H&M. She's the one who looks at a part of a star's body and thinks, Yes. (Reza Jarrahy, M.D., of Los Angeles, who is the husband of Geena Davis, recalls, "When J.Lo came on the scene, the number of people having butt augmentations spiked.") According to Beverly Hills plastic surgeon David Hopp, M.D., she and the woman next door to you now want "a perkier look. Although they want the fullness, they don't want it all overthey want more perk for the volume. What that means is that the 250cc breast implant can now give you the perkiness of the old 450cc implant. You get the hourglass shape without looking heavier. Most women now want a C but a mid-C or small C. It certainly hit a C-plus range for a long period of time." For New York plastic surgeon Haideh Hirmand, M.D., B is the norm. "Most of my patients want to be proportional. They don't want to get into a situation where they don't fit into anything." Or, ...