Skin Deep

It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying, “Beauty is only skin deep.” It’s meant to be a reminder – and a reassurance – that there’s more to a human being than appearance. While that’s true, our appearance is vitally important to us. You only have to spend 5 minutes on social media to reaffirm that’s as true today as it ever has been.

Our appearance used to be a kind of genetic lottery. Not so much any more. Today you can get your hair, eyes, nose, lips, breasts, tummy, and butt lifted, sculpted, enhanced, reduced or reshaped to more closely resemble how you’d prefer to look.

Signs of aging we euphemistically call “laugh lines” and “crow’s feet” can be smoothed away so your selfie looks as youthful as everybody else’s on Instagram. Without a filter!

This kind of physical enhancement used to be the province of Hollywood stars and the wealthy citizens of Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Today we have access to these treatments in Baton Rouge.

One of the places you can take this journey here is Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Dr Ann Ford Reilley has been practicing medicine for 30 years and was the first woman in Louisiana to be certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Dr Reilley’s daughter, Dr Kate Chiasson, has gone one better than her mom: Dr Chiasson is double board certified, by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

Mother and daughter plastic surgeons are partners at Ford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

There are others forms of body modification we use to enhance our appearance. One of the most ancient - and currently most popular - is tattooing.

We have archaeological evidence of humans with tattoos as far back as 5,000 BC.

In the early 20th Century, tattoos came to be associated with outlaws and sailors.

Somewhere along the line that changed. Today, tattoos are regarded as pieces of art, acceptable in all walks of life and they show up everywhere - from the bedroom to the boardroom.

Daniel Esen has been a tattoo artist since 2008, and he’s been inking skin in Baton Rouge for over a decade at his own shop, Black Torch Tattoo.

Back in the 1970’s, a hairdresser turned entrepreneur by the name of Vidal Sassoon marketed his salons and beauty products with the slogan, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”

Sassoon was talking about something as impermanent as a haircut. For Ann, Kate, and Daniel, his slogan applies in a far more consequential form. After they leave their shop or your clinic, their patients and clients are changed forever. Tattoos and cosmetic surgery are permanent.

What Ann, Kate and Daniel are doing every day requires skill, talent, confidence and courage. They’re working in professions in which there is literally no room for error. This conversation is a fascinating insight into what it’s like having that kind of responsibility.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.

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