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Does plastic surgery actually resolve personal insecurities, or do people simply shift focus to new ones?
Plastic surgery does not resolve insecurities — it relocates them. Shani Suissa is direct on this point: whatever you fixate on before going under the knife, you will still fixate on after. You just find a new target.
The pattern is consistent. A patient gets a nose job and stops obsessing over their nose — but within months, a different feature takes center stage. Suissa uses herself as the clearest possible example: even after her own rhinoplasty, she still catches herself nitpicking her nose. The procedure changed the shape. It did not change the habit of self-scrutiny.
Jennifer Cohen, the host of Habits and Hustle, draws an immediate parallel: people who lose significant weight often stop worrying about fat and immediately fixate on loose skin they had never even noticed before. The brain's critical gaze simply finds a new place to land.
The insecurity doesn't disappear — it migrates
This is the uncomfortable truth that before-and-after photos never show. The "after" image captures a result, not a mental state. Suissa's point — explored at length in this episode of Habits and Hustle — is that cosmetic procedures address a physical feature, not the underlying psychological pattern driving the dissatisfaction.
The social media environment makes this loop worse. Zoom calls, Snapchat filters, and the constant exposure to high-resolution images of our own faces have trained people to scrutinize themselves at a level that was simply not possible a decade ago. The demand for procedures is fueled not by a single insecurity but by a near-permanent state of self-surveillance.
Suissa's position is not that cosmetic surgery is wrong. It is that going into a procedure expecting it to solve a confidence problem is a miscalculation — and one with real financial and physical costs attached. A procedure that once cost $8,000 now costs $20,000. The psychological return on that investment, if the underlying insecurity is the real issue, is close to zero.
"If you are pretty before, you're going to be pretty after. If you're ugly before, you're going to be uglier with a tighter face after. It's not going to change what you are."
Shani Suissa — Co-host / Friend and Foil, Habits and Hustle.
Suissa is a recurring co-host on the solo episodes of Habits and Hustle, where she serves as what host Jen Cohen calls her "friend and foil." She speaks on cosmetic surgery not as an outside observer but as someone with direct, complicated personal experience: approximately two years before this episode, she underwent a rhinoplasty, septoplasty, and turbinate reduction. The procedures led to a septum perforation that required corrective surgery. She also had her hair colored by a hairdresser who had undergone a lower facelift, giving her an unusually close-range perspective on what surgical results actually look like in real life, at real proximity.
Two years post-surgery — and still picking apart the same nose
Suissa's rhinoplasty is not just an anecdote. It is a data point. Two years after the surgery, her dermatologist noted visible swelling still present during a laser facial appointment. The nose had changed. The self-criticism had not fully resolved. She openly admits she still nitpicks the result — the very thing the surgery was meant to address.
This is the detail that makes the argument concrete rather than abstract. It is not a theoretical claim about psychology. It is a first-person account, from someone who had the procedure, paid the cost, managed the complications, and still catches herself in the same critical loop she had before. The full account is available in the Habits and Hustle episode.
See also
Is a surgeon's social media popularity a reliable indicator of their surgical quality?
Shani Suissa and host Jen argue that a plastic surgeon who is very active on social media is likely spending more time creating content than performing surgery — and that online fame does not correlate with surgical quality or safety.
How long does recovery from rhinoplasty actually take, and what is the real downtime?
Shani Suissa reports still being swollen two years after her rhinoplasty, a fact confirmed by her dermatologist during a laser facial visit. She notes that the true recovery timeline is far longer than most surgeons advertise.
Why should people never get a turbinate reduction during nose surgery?
According to Shani Suissa, turbinates are small flaps inside the nose that regulate airflow, warming and humidifying air before it reaches the lungs. Reducing them can cause permanent breathing complications — as she experienced firsthand, resulting in a septum perforation requiring corrective surgery.
Key takeaways
- Insecurities present before a cosmetic procedure do not disappear — they migrate to a different body part after surgery.
- Suissa's own rhinoplasty is the clearest example: two years later, she still nitpicks the nose that was operated on.
- The weight-loss parallel holds: eliminate one source of fixation and the brain immediately identifies the next one (loose skin, a different feature).
- Going into surgery expecting a confidence fix is a miscalculation — the procedure changes a physical feature, not the psychological pattern behind the self-scrutiny.
The full conversation — including Suissa's account of her own surgery, complications, and what she would do differently — is on Listenly.
Listen to the episode on Listenly