Dr. Botox

Hello, English learners.

Welcome back to EnglishPod.

My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine.

And today we have an intermediate level lesson talking about appearances.

That's right.

We are going to change or somebody wants to change their appearance and they're going

to have surgery.

Well, before we get started, let's look at what kind of surgery they're having in today's

vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview.

All right.

So today we're going to be talking about plastic surgery specifically.

Plastic surgery.

So why plastic?

I have no idea.

I don't either.

No.

Well, basically, plastic surgery is, you know, surgery for your appearance, right?

It's not really for health reasons.

That's right.

And sometimes they add things to you.

Sometimes they take things away, but they're not for your health.

They're not for your heart or your lungs.

Right.

It's for your appearance.

Yeah. and also called cosmetic surgery.

That's right.

And we'll be hearing that later.

But cosmetic means having to do with your appearance like cosmetics.

Right.

Exactly.

All right.

So we're going to be talking about this.

Let's listen to our dialogue for the first time and we'll be back.

What are you doing?

Look at me.

I look so old.

I look as if I were 30.

Come on.

Stop being so vain.

You look great.

You are beautiful.

Yes, I am.

But I think it's time for some plastic surgery.

I'm tired of these wrinkles and sagging skin.

See?

I don't see any wrinkles or sagging skin.

You're 25.

Stop being ridiculous.

Besides, I think that people who get Botox have facelifts or tummy tucks look weird.

Doesn't look natural.

Whatever.

I think I'm going to get liposuction and a nose job and some breast implants as well.

I think you need to get brain surgery.

I honestly don't think you need cosmetic surgery.

You look amazing.

I thought you were my friend and would support me on this.

I just want to feel better about myself and feel more attractive.

You don't need plastic surgery to do that.

You're fine the way you are and you have guys drooling all over you.

Plus, plastic surgery hurts.

Really?

Yeah.

I got my nose job, I was black and blue for a week.

Alright, we're back.

So yeah, they think this girl really wants to get this surgery.

But she doesn't seem to know why.

She's just like, I'm in a bad mood.

I want surgery.

And that's the worst reason.

And it's pretty painful from what I hear.

Expensive and painful and potentially dangerous.

Yeah, exactly.

But we can talk about that at the end.

Alright.

So why don't we start with the words that we saw that are all related to surgery in

Language Takeaway.

Language Takeaway.

Okay, well this first one might be the reason for surgery, not necessarily a kind of surgery.

If someone is vain.

Okay, so if a person is vain, this is an adjective.

That means that they are very, they care too much about their appearance, right?

Right.

And they care so much that they only care about themselves.

So do I look good?

I love my face, my eyes.

I look so good.

So a person who is vain thinks very highly of themselves.

Okay, very good.

And well, this person I think wanted to get surgery as well because she said she had wrinkles.

Okay, wrinkles are little lines on your face.

So maybe on your forehead or next to your mouth.

And generally, when we get older, people get more and more of these.

Right.

And you have, even you have wrinkly skin when you're in the bathtub for too long and you

look in your hands, they look like raisins.

You have wrinkly skin.

That's right.

Wrinkles are little lines in your skin.

All right.

And well, you have wrinkles as you said around your mouth and eyes.

And sometimes under your eyes, you also have some sagging skin.

Or under your chin.

Under your chin as well, yeah.

That's right.

So sagging means coming down, means it's heavy.

It's like hanging.

Yeah.

Right.

So sagging, something sags.

It's heavy, it pulls down.

But if you have sagging skin, that means your skin is no longer tight.

It's kind of loose and it hangs.

Falling off your face.

Okay.

And well, a new popular treatment that is not really surgery is this Botox.

That's right.

So Botox is something that women and some men do every couple of months I think and

they have to get shots.

Right.

They're like injections.

That's right.

And they tighten your skin.

And so you can get Botox in your face, your forehead or your eyes and it makes you look

younger for a couple of months.

I've heard that they also put them in their lips to make them like fuller, right?

That's right.

And sometimes you can say that someone's had too much Botox because they can no longer

smile or they can't stop smiling.

Exactly.

And well, very related to this is also when people get a facelift.

Okay.

A facelift.

So basically it's that a doctor, a plastic surgeon will tighten the skin on your face

so he'll pull your eyes and the skin next to your ears to make your face look younger.

Right.

So that's called a facelift.

So it's to kind of take away those wrinkles, right?

Or the sagging skin.

Right.

Lift means to pull up.

Right.

It's the opposite of sag.

Very good.

Alright.

So this dialogue has a lot of rich vocabulary related to surgery.

So why don't we listen to our dialogue again and we'll be back with the second part of

language takeaway to explain a little bit more.

What are you doing?

Look at me.

I look so old.

I look as if I were 30.

Come on.

Stop being so vain.

You look great.

You are beautiful.

Yes, I am.

But I think it's time for some plastic surgery.

I'm tired of these wrinkles and sagging skin.

See?

I don't see any wrinkles or sagging skin.

You're 25.

Stop being ridiculous.

Besides, I think that people who get Botox, have facelifts or tummy tucks look weird.

It doesn't look natural.

Whatever.

I think I'm going to get liposuction and a nose job and some breast implants as well.

I think you need to get brain surgery.

I honestly don't think you need cosmetic surgery.

You look amazing.

I thought you were my friend and would support me on this.

I just want to feel better about myself and feel more attractive.

You don't need plastic surgery to do that.

You're fine the way you are and you have guys drooling all over you.

Plastic surgery hurts.

Really?

Yeah.

When I got my nose job, I was black and blue for a week.

All right, we're back.

So what other surgical procedure is in store for us?

Well now the big ones.

So we've left the face and we're talking about the rest of the body.

The first one is a tummy tuck.

Okay, so a tummy tuck.

What is that exactly?

Well, let's look at these two words by themselves because maybe tummy, people have heard before.

This is another way to say stomach.

Usually children say tummy.

Right, my tummy hurts.

My tummy hurts and doctors, they'll say stomach.

But the name of this surgery is tummy tuck because tuck means to put in or to fold.

And so my mom used to say tuck in your shirt.

You know when your shirt comes out of your pants and that means you put it back in.

Well a tuck means to fold your stomach under.

It means to make your stomach look smaller and they put staples or I think they sew you

up.

Yeah, they sew you up.

It's pretty painful, right?

I've heard that.

Usually this is because somebody got a liposuction for example and that's our next word, liposuction.

Okay, lipo, that's kind of fat, right?

Yeah.

And suction means to pull like a vacuum.

Right.

So that's basically what they do.

They open the person up and kind of use a sort of vacuum type device and suck all the

fat out of the stomach or the balcony areas, you know, the love handles that are also called.

And this way, they remove all this excess fat.

And because they do this, sometimes the skin, since it's been stretched out because you

were a little bit fat, they need to have a tummy tuck.

That means to hide the extra skin.

The extra skin to kind of hide it.

So these two words, these two procedures actually go hand in hand because maybe if you're very

fat you get a liposuction but that doesn't solve your problem because now you have all

this sagging skin off your stomach.

That's right.

So you have to have a tummy tuck as well.

Alright.

So yeah, very, very dangerous procedure I've heard as well, right?

Yeah.

And they usually only do it with people who are very, very fat.

That means dangerously fat.

Because if you do it on a skinny person, you could really hurt them.

Yeah, of course, fat is also necessary for our bodies.

Alright, so now moving back up to the face again, a very common procedure, I think one

of the most common ones is a nose job.

A nose job.

And so nose job is very colloquial.

You'll hear this on the TV.

Nose job means to fix someone's nose, to change the shape or appearance of their nose.

And so oftentimes people with really big noses want smaller noses.

And so the doctor will take some bone away and will put the skin back.

Yes, that's right.

So this is called a nose job or formerly known as like a nose surgery, right?

That's right.

Rhinoplasty is the official name.

And actually I've heard it's very painful because they have to break your nose before

they fix it.

Exactly.

Wow.

I can't believe people do this.

And well, one of the very common ones among women most likely is our breast implants.

That's right.

So breast implants, am I allowed to say boob job?

Yeah, you can.

Well, the very common phrase for this is boob job.

Boob is a very colloquial term for breasts.

And breast implants are, well, an implant is something that you put inside something.

Okay.

And so a breast implant is a piece of silicone.

So it's like plastic, but it's more like a liquid plastic.

Yeah.

Just imagine like this big plastic bag with like gel, right?

Inside of it.

And they put that inside a woman's chest to make her breasts bigger.

And so these are very, very popular surgeries, breast implants.

Right.

Exactly.

I guess many models and many types, different types of women get breast implants.

That's right.

And the verb there is to get.

So she got breast implants.

Right.

Okay.

Because they're things.

Very good.

All right.

So why don't we listen to our dialogue for the last time and we'll be back to talk a

little bit more.

What are you doing?

Look at me.

I look so old.

I look as if I were 30.

Come on.

Stop being so vain.

You look great.

You are beautiful.

Yes, I am.

But I think it's time for some plastic surgery.

I'm tired of these wrinkles and sagging skin.

See?

I don't see any wrinkles or sagging skin.

You're 25.

Stop being ridiculous.

Besides, I think that people who get Botox, have facelifts or tummy tucks look weird.

It doesn't look natural.

Whatever.

I think I'm going to get liposuction and a nose job and some breast implants as well.

I think you need to get brain surgery.

I honestly don't think you need cosmetic surgery.

You look amazing.

I thought you were my friend and would support me on this.

I just want to feel better about myself and feel more attractive.

You don't need plastic surgery to do that.

You're fine the way you are and you have guys drooling all over you.

Plus, plastic surgery hurts.

Really?

Yeah.

When I got my nose job, I was black and blue for a week.

All right, we're back.

So, as you mentioned, all of these surgeries are very painful and very expensive, right?

They are.

The plastic surgery industry is huge.

I was just reading an article that said that re-dos are becoming very popular.

There are doctors who perform re-dos.

That means-

To re-do a surgery.

That's right.

They're fixing other surgeries because oftentimes people go in, they say, I want a nose job,

they get a nose job, and then it's not the nose they wanted.

They have doctors now who specialize in fixing former surgeries.

Wow.

I've heard also a lot about the plastic surgery tourism industry where people get offered

a package, for example, to go to countries like Argentina where they have good doctors

and it's very inexpensive compared to the states to get plastic surgery.

It's also popular now in Asia, I believe they're traveling to Hong Kong to get plastic surgery

done.

Interesting.

Yeah, I know.

But it's one of those things that if you have the money and you really feel that you want

to improve your appearance, then-

But is it an improvement?

I don't know.

It is.

It's a little fake.

Yeah, it is a little bit fake.

Like, for example, but it does help people with their self-confidence, right?

Sometimes, for example, with the case of breast implants, some women feel very, very self-conscious

about them having smaller breasts.

They want to get bigger breasts and they feel more confident, happier, and stuff like this.

I guess if it helps and if you really want it, everyone's to their own.

Well, I'm curious what our users think about this.

Have you had plastic surgery?

Would you like to have plastic surgery?

Let us know on our website, EnglishPod.com.

Right.

We'll see you guys there.

Until next time.

Bye.

Thank you.