'Plastic Wives' Defend Breast Implants, Botox and 'Beverly Hills' Decisions
The stars of TLC's new reality TV show are married to Hollywood plastic surgeons
Jan. 23, 2013 -- Breast augmentation, Botox, liposuction. Almost no cosmetic procedure is off limits for the four Hollywood women who are the stars of TLC's new reality TV show.
Veronica Matlock, Alana Sands, Danya Devon and Frances Marques are the "Plastic Wives," married to some of the most successful plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, with all the perks. Namely, free plastic surgery.
Marques said she has had her breasts done four times. For Matlock, three times. Devon said she loves Botox.
"I'm sure this lifestyle seems a little crazy," Devon said. "This lifestyle, look, is crazy. This is Hollywood, though."
Their new show, which premieres Sunday, Jan. 27, at 10 p.m. ET on TLC, leaves little to the imagination about what life in and out of the operating room is really like. At home Sands, the wife of cosmetic dentist Dr. Kevin Sands, has three full-time nannies for her two kids, two full-time masseuses and a full-time chef.
"I'm not complaining," Sands said. "I'm not complaining at all."
For these wives, it's a no-appointment-necessary and no-payment-required lifestyle. They have unlimited access to the operating room, whatever they want, whenever they want -- even a personal procedure room at home for a little nip and tuck when the mood strikes them. They are proud of the work they had done, living billboards of their husbands' steady hands.
"I heard some advice a long time ago that has always stuck with me, and it's if you're considering a plastic surgeon, look at his wife," Devon said. "And that's a perfect example of the kind of work he most likely does."
"My husband is doing a consult for a Brazilian butt, he'll tell the women, 'I did it on my wife, here look, look at this picture,' and it does help," Marques said.
And they are quick to judge the work of other surgeons' wives.
"If we don't like them, we don't hang out with their wives," Sands said.
Their husbands might try to get them to stop getting plastic surgery, but they always seem to lose the battle. Matlock lovingly refers to her husband, Dr. David Matlock, a gynecological surgeon, as "the vagina man."
"One way to get exactly what I want is to say, 'All right, don't worry about it. I'll go to doctor so and so," Matlock said. "And he'll be like, 'Oh, no you don't.'"
Even when faced with the possibility of critics saying they are overdoing it, the ladies weren't fazed.
"We're not telling anybody they have to go do this," Devon said. "I'm all about, like, 'Look, here's what I did. Here's the information. Take it or leave it.' If you like it, great. If you don't, great. No worries."
But no amount of Botox can ward off aging and the pressure they feel to stay perfect. Devon, a former entertainment news anchor, recently turned 40 and said she was faced with the reality of wrinkles.
"In any other community in the world, this makes absolutely no sense, but it's Hollywood," she said. "I wanted to continue working in television. I wanted to continue working in front of the camera, and unfortunately, you hit 40, you want to continue working in TV, there are some things that you've got to think about."
So Devon said she asked her husband, Dr. Brent Moelleken, to help with everything from injections to nips and tucks.
"I'll still obsess about an acne scar or something, but I think most women do find things they obsess about. But look, I'm pretty happy," she said.
Sands said she is not addicted to plastic surgery, but in the past six months, she has been in her husband's office "a lot."
"I always see him in surgery doing people's teeth and I'm always like, 'Babe, just please do my teeth,'" she said.
Though plastic surgery is a $10 billion a year industry in the United States, plastic surgeon Dr. Lisa Cassileth said shows like "Plastic Wives" send the wrong message about body image and cosmetic surgery.
"I think if you have something you're walking around with, it's easy to fix, you don't need to live with it, O.K., there's a level where you can fix that," she said. "But for the day-to-day person, I think most people are only going to want to fix something if they wake up every morning and it bothers them and it's worth it. And that's a much smaller percentage than what we see on television."
Cassileth said she often spends her days correcting surgeries that she said have gone too far.
"The insider phrase is 'Beverly Hills,'" she said. "So when people come in and they're overdone, I say to them, 'I'm sorry, you're looking too Beverly Hills, and that's when you stop.'"
She has helped fix patients like Jillian Weisberg, who said another plastic surgeon injected a full syringe of juvederm into her lips and they ballooned.
"When people would come over to my house, they would laugh in my face," she said. "I looked ridiculous."
But some plastic wives can't seem to stop and their lives, just like their faces, seem glamorous, scar-free and flawless -- most of the time. Marques thought she had it all during her seven-year marriage to Dr. Ryan Stanton, until, she said, he left her. They are still friends and they run his plastic surgery business together.
"He got the midlife crisis and he wants to be with a younger women [sic] half of my age and so he left me because of that," Marques said. "Although I have done everything to keep myself young, he just -- I couldn't keep the man."
Even so, Marques said she even loves the name of the reality show, "Plastic Wives."
"I thought it was brilliant," she said. "We do a lot of plastic surgery, but we don't look nothing like plastic, you know, we don't look overdone."
And she still wants more.
"I am kind of addicted," Marques said. "There are so many things coming, so many new technologies, new implants, new Botox, new fillers, laser procedures and all that. And I want it all."