Press Release

Source: Carver Bancorp, Inc.

INTRO — RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Two million Australians can't be wrong — or can they? Once, there was no alternative, we were stuck with what nature gave us. Now, it seems, nothing is impossible, no job is too big or too small. From the tiniest imperfection through to an extreme, a total makeover — no wonder cosmetic surgery is one of the fastest growing branches of medicine. No wonder the surgeons say looking good is the key to success and well being, that there job is a kind of psychiatry with knives. But the skeptics say beware. Money might buy a nose job but, as the old saying going, it can't buy happiness.

CHERILYN SARKISIAN LAPIERE: (sings) "Tits and ass won't change your life, unless they're yours." Didn't cost a fortune either, didn't hurt my sex life neither. I've had a little fat removed from under my eyes; I had my nose done for my 50th birthday present. I had a little nippy-tuck right here, a little tightening, and a little implant right here to widen my smile right there. I've had my breasts done. Hello, girls. And I've had a little liposuction here and there in lots of places, but the feet are real.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: It was not so long ago when we used to say, "only in America", but not any more.

DR MICHAEL LEE ADAY: I'd like to know exactly what it is that concerns you about your face?

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: The upper and lower part of my eyes and then particularly this — lots of loose jowl.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: It's our fixation with the way we look, the way others see us.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: When I see myself in the mirror, I look like an old lady, too old for my age, and I'm particularly jolly around here, and I've got lots. I can pull an amazing amount of skin on both sides.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Joan Sandra Molinsky is 43 years old. She hates the way she looks.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: I feel ugly. I don't feel pretty.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Hates it so much that for the past 18 months, she's been taking anti-depressants.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: The surgery that I'm going to have hopefully will make me more than happy. Bring back my self-esteem. Bring back my confidence. Bring back my general laughter. I used to be a bit of a party girl.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Tina believes that money can buy back her happiness ... and bring back the person she once was. To do it, she will spend almost an entire day in surgery. Dr Michael Lee Aday will perform a nip here, a tuck there, and a $20,000 operation that Tina hopes will end her years of depression.

You've already seen good work, the faces working for you?

DR MICHAEL LEE ADAY: Absolutely, we're very happy. We've been able to lose around about 10 years.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: You can see that now?

DR MICHAEL LEE ADAY: You can see on the table exactly what results you're going to get.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: And it's not just women who are changing the way they look. Professor Timothy Leary is a plastic surgeon. And these days, he says that 40 percent of the people he sees are men.

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY LEARY: We have mechanics, we have policemen, we have successful business people, we have housewives, and we have politicians.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: In Australia, it's estimated that more than two million people — men, women, young and old — have had some form of cosmetic surgery. This increasing public acceptance is due in part to the public spectacle provided by shows like Extreme Makeover. Here, the ordinaries become the extraordinary, the plain are transformed into the pretty. The notion so seductively sold is that beautiful is better and easy to achieve.

VICKIE LYNN HOGAN: This society that we live in is very youth-focused, youth-orientated. Everything's got to be perfect. If you're not perfect, do something about it. And to think you can walk in somewhere and change the way you look and your life is going to improve — it's unrealistic.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Vickie Lynn Hogan is a social worker that counsels people who've had cosmetic surgery. All too often, she says, people believe it will be an amazing elixir of life, that a new look will make you feel better.

Why is there this need, this obsession by society to look good?

VICKIE LYNN HOGAN: Well, this is society; this is where we're at the moment. It is a concern. I mean, what is it for young children? What are the messages they're getting? That only if you're beautiful or if you're thin, that you're going to be successful and the rest of you are going to be a pack of losers? And I think that that does more harm than good.

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY LEARY: You and I both know if you're born ugly, and we won't define that, but the fact of life is that many opportunities in life will pass you by.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: It's almost sad.

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY LEARY: No, I think its part of nature's way. It's Darwinian selection. But the fact is we don't accept Darwinian selection, that's why we're going to tamper with people genetically.

JASON ALEXANDER: I thought of myself as pretty ineffective and pretty weak and withdrawn and I guess you could say, not masculine, you know.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Jason Alexander is a doctor, specializing in psychiatry. Since a teenager, he's waged a personal battle with depression. Then, he started to think the unthinkable; that what caused the ugliness within he saw as the ugliness on the outside.

JASON ALEXANDER: In the end, I was defining myself as this ugly person who had a big nose rather than a person who had a lot of good attributes and probably, you know, had a lot to offer.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Eighteen months ago, Jason bought himself a new nose, a new chin and, he says, a new life.

JASON ALEXANDER: Oh, it's fantastic.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Today, he's much happier.

JASON ALEXANDER: Feel there now. Feel that chin.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Oh, yeah.

JASON ALEXANDER: I had nothing at all. It was really sunken. It would go right back under my face. And so yeah, that's a big piece of plastic in my chin there.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: What was your profile like?

JASON ALEXANDER: It would go straight down like that. So there was basically none of that at all.

VICKIE LYNN HOGAN: This isn't like Changing Rooms or the renovations shows. If you believe that you can change your appearance and if you believe that that's going to change your life, I think you're denying a whole inner self. When we look at a person, we're looking at them physically, emotionally and psychologically. It's not just a blank canvas.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: So much of this obsession with looking good comes from here, Hollywood, the home of the perfect look, where to be nipped, tucked, pulled and peeled is a way of life.

CHERILYN SARKISIAN LAPIERE: Who says that we have to look terrible after a certain age? Those are old wives' tales. We're doing away with that way of thinking. Welcome, Richard, to Beverly Hills, the home of beautiful people and beautiful plastic surgery.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPiere is a young 50-year-old and there's not much of her original. She's a professional image-maker, a person in great demand in a town where image is everything.

CHERILYN SARKISIAN LAPIERE: If you're going to live in this temple of your soul for 100 years, I don't know of any house you can live in for 100 years and not refurbish, fix, remodel.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Eve charges more than $2000 a day, dispensing advice on how to look good.

CHERILYN SARKISIAN LAPIERE: Every walk of life is having surgery done — firemen, policemen, teachers, lawyers, businesspeople, everybody. For men, I don't know if you know this Richard, but it's their sexual prowess … is right here in the jaw line. It's, yeah, well-defined jaw line … oh, very sexy in a man, and they know it. It makes them look more macho.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Do I need a bit of lipo?

CHERILYN SARKISIAN LAPIERE: Are we going to talk about you now? (Laughs)

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: It's been nearly 12 months since Denver police officer Peggy Rowlett had her extreme makeover in America. Her husband had walked out and she needed a change. So she changed everything.

PEGGY ROWLETT: The single best thing that cosmetic surgery did for me is I am happy as a result of the process I went through. It was just an absolutely remarkable change in almost every facet of my life. It was one of the greatest things that have ever happened to me.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: But sometimes a makeover can be too extreme. And sometimes surgery is a tragic failure.

IWANA INESCA: I had the classic botch job.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Iwana Inesca came to Hollywood, dreaming of stardom. She was 19 and her agent told her if she wanted to work, she needed a nose job.

IWANA INESCA: It was complete horror. I had absolutely no bridge. I mean, my bridge was flat to my face. I started screaming, I started crying, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was screaming, I was looking at him. "What did you do to my face? This is my face, you know."

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: For three years, Iwana lived with the agony of a deformed nose. Fourteen doctors later, she finally found one who was able to fix it.

IWANA INESCA: I felt destroyed. I was depressed. I was suicidal. I mean, you don't want to live, you know. It's like all you live for is this dream that you have, and for me, it was acting. And how can I act when this is what I have to present to the world, my face? When someone steals that from you, it's like taking away your life, you know, your childhood, and a lot of years. It's hard.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: You really felt suicidal?

IWANA INESCA: Yeah. Mm-hmm. For a lot of the time. Yes.

VICKIE LYNN HOGAN: What I am concerned about is that the reality isn't that everyone is happy. And that I see a lot of vulnerable people who come, who have been damaged psychologically, physically, financially and emotionally by having surgery.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: But it seems there's no turning back. Today, it's one of the fastest growing areas of medicine in Australia.

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY LEARY: I think in cosmetic surgery, it's extraordinary how much you affect the psyche of people, and I like the effect that I create in people. I think cosmetic surgery really is psychiatry with a knife.

VICKIE LYNN HOGAN: Oh! Psychiatry with knives! Well, I don't know how the psychiatrists would feel about that. I think that's a pretty dangerous sort of an assumption. What you're saying is that if you just change the way you look, the fact that your marriage might be breaking down, that you're actually clinically depressed or there's something happening in your life — you're recently bereaved or divorced or your husband is screwing your secretary — that all that will be changed with a facelift or you're going to get new boobs and all the problems in your life are going to disappear? I think not.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: But Joan Sandra Molinsky's problems were more than cosmetic. The way she looked was making her severely depressed.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: One, two, three. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: And now, for the first time in a long time, she's happy.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: Oh, my God. It's fantastic.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: Tina's convinced her changed looks will change her life.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: I look so different.

RICHARD WAYNE PENNIMAN: And just like on Extreme Makeover, it's not over until you're presented to family and friends.

JOAN SANDRA MOLINSKY: It's only now I'm still pinching myself, because I just can't believe it. I look in the mirror and say, "Is that me? Is that me?"

 Carver Bancorp, Inc. Media Contact: Kekst and Company David Lilly Joseph Kuo (212) 521-4800