How to Choose a Dermatological Surgeon – Jill Zarin Style

That’s right, dermatological surgeon, not just a dermatologist as Jill desperately wants you to believe. Let’s check out some doctor details and see if we can figure out why the Jillster chose this particular refinisher.

There’s a lot here so I’m going to highlight in blue the areas I am assuming Jill would have seized upon.

From Cityfile –

Who

The most famous cosmetic dermatologist in New York, Pat Wexler is the doctor who smoothes out the city’s most expensive faces.

Backstory

Bronx-born Wexler left New York for medical school in Brussels, returning to the U.S. in 1979. Four years of work in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Beth Israel followed before she concluded that treating sick people was too depressing. So she headed to Mount Sinai for another residency in the (potentially more upbeat) field of dermatology. Wexler opened her cosmetic dermatology office in the late 1980s, making a name for herself in the early days by treating the city’s top models. She’s since become one of the best-known dermatologists in town. Stop off at Wexler’s office and you might just see a familiar (and tight) face walking out the door. Her patients have includedStephanie Seymour, Candace Bushnell, Joan Rivers, Donna Karan, P. Diddy, Tory Burch, Vera Wang, Kathie Lee Gifford, Blythe Danner, Carolina Herrera, Calvin Klein, and Michael Kors, among many others.

Of note

Dr. Pat—as she’s known to patients and friends—is best known for transferring butt and stomach fat to patients’ faces, but she also does the more standard cosmetic treatments like laser resurfacing, chemical peels, vein injections, and Botox. She’s also recently become a champion of Thermage, a radio frequency machine that tightens the skin. (Wexler’s client Ellen Barkin swears by it.)

Of course, she wouldn’t be a fully-fledged celebrity skin doctor without her name on lotions and potions, so in 2005 she introduced a line of skin care products, which are sold at Henri Bendel, Bath and Body Works, and QVC. Like many of her ilk, she’s extremely talented when it comes to self-promotion. The diminutive derm makes regular appearances on shows like Good Morning America and Oprah, doles out free Botox injections to journalists who write about her, and she’s even been known to walk around in Wexler-branded t-shirts that promote her practice.

Soundbite

In a quote that will forever be linked to Wexler, PR guru Peggy Siegal once described fat grafting thusly: “The doctor takes it out of your bottom and puts it back in your face. So when you are kissing my face, you are actually kissing my ass.”

Personal

Patricia is married to Eugene Wexler, who quit working as a urologist at Beth Israel to join his wife in her dermatology practice. They have two grown daughters, Perri and Jane, and live in an apartment on the Upper East Side, which they purchased for $2.5 million in 2000. They spend weekends at a home in East Hampton they bought for $1.35 million in 1999. You won’t catch her sunning by the pool, though. Freakishly averse to tanning, she admitted to the Times that she spreads suntan lotion between her toes.

Now, I could be totally off base here and maybe Jill did her due diligence and checked out the medical credentials and spoke to some other patients and ran a background check to see if she’d ever picked her nose or had a panty wedgy (as we all know Ramona would have done), but I’m more inclined to think Jill got all twitchy about the connections to famous peeps, the mutual interest in self-promotion, the possibility of free botox if she tweeted about it and OMG, she totally does Ellen Barkin’s face and Andy lurves him some Ellen Barkin and if she could get Ellen Barkin to be her buddy then Andy would have to love her more and maybe give Ginger more airtime than that stupid ball of hair that that snooty Beverly Hills bitch Lisa Vanderpump drags around with her.

What Jill might not know, though, is Patricia Wexler’s political bent. She’s a…a…a liberal! Shock and horror, shock and horror! And looky what she has to say about Democrat plastic surgery vs Republican plastic surgery –

From Gawker –

So in light of the inevitable squeeze on cosmetic enhancement spending, how’s everyone’s favorite diminutive derm Patricia Wexler doing? Just fine, she tells Wowowow: Not only are her patients still coming in for treatments, they “feel it is critical to keep up appearances right now,” although some are cheeky enough to ask for discounts, which, just so you know, will certainly not be granted. But, more importantly, Pat is thrilled about Obama’s new presidency for the obvious reason: Democrats have more tasteful surgery!

“We’ve had so many Republicans who have been over-surgerized; we don’t have to say which ones.” Oh, go on, Pat! “[N]ot Laura Bush, but Nancy [Reagan] andElizabeth Dole.” Whereas Nancy Pelosi “has had some good work,” and Michelle Obama doesn’t need anything. “She’s beautiful. She’s young. But, of course, in my practice, I have people much younger than Michelle Obama already doing things.” Hear that, ladies? Michelle might not need anything, but if you’re anywhere near her age, you certainly do.

This just tickles the hell out of me. Not to mention the bit about discounts. You just KNOW Jill’s angled for a free treatment or two. I wonder how many Team Jill t-shirts Dr. Wexler’s received?