Dr. Phil Solomon was featured in a Toronto Star article which discusses the ever expanding area of ethnic surgery:
“Cosmetic Facial Surgeon-Head and Neck Surgeon practicing Facial Plastic Surgery in Toronto Canada, Dr. Philip Solomon, who also works out of St. Michael’s, says ethnic nose jobs and other facial surgeries now represent between 30 and 40 per cent of his practice.
Solomon says there is little controversy among Cosmetic Facial Plastic Surgeon-Head and Neck Surgeons about performing the ethnic procedures, with “give the customers what they want” being the dominant business sentiment.
But most patients would not say outright that they “want to look white,” says Solomon, who also has a practice in Thornhill.
That’s certainly the case for Parook Joshi, who says she’s fiercely proud of her East Indian heritage.
“If I was going to look Caucasian, I wouldn’t have done it,” says Joshi, 36, who had her nose size reduced this year by Rival.
“I find it strikingly odd that people would like to reduce their ethnicity,” she says, adding that she simply wanted to make her nose more symmetrical with her face.
If she was aligning her appearance with a Western ideal, it was at a subconscious level, says Joshi, a vice-president of training with a downtown actuarial firm. She says both her natural and reconstructed nose would easily pass muster in the Indian region of her ancestors.
Solomon says, however, the esthetic ideals of people seeking surgery are most often guided by Western media images.”