BEFORE: Alicia Hunter neglected her appearance to focus on her marriage and was 60 pounds heavier. (
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Diana Solomon is having a damn good time, sipping a glass of red wine at the bar of Dos Caminos on Park Avenue South. Nearby, there are three men shooting her admiring looks. The male attention is nothing new; with a slight Texas twang and dimpled cheeks, the pretty brunette has been attracting men since she was a girl.
The fact that she’s now 51 hasn’t changed that at all; there’s light in her eyes and nary a line on her face.
Moments later, she waves to her new boyfriend, a strapping athletic man 10 years her junior. The other men disperse.
It’s hard to tell by looking at her, but just last year Solomon was in a very different place. When her 25-year marriage collapsed last spring, she was bereft.
“I kept thinking, ‘This isn’t how the fairy tale is supposed to end,’ ” she recalls.
“I was crying every day, and I couldn’t get out of bed.”
She had modeled over the years, doing both catalog work and fashion shows, and heard about the cosmetic dermatologist Marina Peredo from fellow models who encouraged her to make an appointment.
She headed to Peredo’s Smithtown, LI, office for Fraxel laser treatments that eradicated wrinkles on her face, filler that plumped her lips and Botox that smoothed her brow. In the end, she felt so good she started an image-consulting business. “After 27 years of being with one man, it was like I had come out of a time bubble,” says Solomon. “Suddenly I had 25-year-olds asking me out, but I put the limit at 35. Thank God for Dr. Peredo; she was there for me physically and emotionally.”
Solomon is one of a number of women who have taken post-divorce revenge with plastic surgery. Driven to feel better about their looks after the devastation of a failed marriage, they seek cosmetic procedures, which can erase years — and build self-esteem. “At 51, I not only feel better, but I look better than I ever have,” says Solomon. “If you are smarter, wiser and you can look younger, don’t you have it all?”
Indeed, more women are bouncing back from divorce with so-called revenge surgery; a recent study by the Transform Cosmetic Group in Britain showed that 26 percent of plastic-surgery patients are newly divorced women.
And New York doctors such as Peredo recognize that their role with newly single women often goes beyond the medical.
“It’s not about vanity; it’s about sanity,” she maintains. “I’ve gone through divorce myself, and you feel unattractive and unlovable. A lot of these women say, ‘You gave me 10 years back,’ and if they look in the mirror and like what they see, it really helps get them out of a slump.”
Maria Sheffield, a children’s book writer who lives on the Upper West Side, doubts she would have recovered emotionally without surgery. She had gained about 30 pounds due to depression after her 15-year marriage ended in 2007. About a year later, she went to Alan Matarasso, a Manhattan plastic surgeon who performed liposuction on her stomach, flanks, jaw and neck.
She looked great — and the surgery did more than fix her figure.
“I have to tell you, it changed my whole outlook,” says Sheffield, 50.
“My ex-husband even told me I look great. He took my power away, and this gave it back. Now I’m in a relationship with a man I met on a business trip.”
Ellen Sawyer (who didn’t want to use her real name, as her divorce is ongoing) is a 44-year-old mother of two whose husband of 20 years now lives with a 37-year-old Brazilian woman. “I am a stay-at-home mom who is single, and my husband is with some exotic hottie,” she sighs. “I felt that whatever I could do to feel better about myself was OK.”
A few sessions with Howard Sobel, a Park Avenue cosmetic dermatologist, eliminated her face’s wrinkles and made her butt more Brazilian — tight and lifted. “Thanks to technology, I’m me, but better,” she asserts.
Alicia Hunter, a 43-year-old aesthetician and mother of two, always struggled with her weight, but finally managed to lose nearly 60 pounds. “My husband didn’t even blink; he just wasn’t supportive of it,” she maintains. “I never felt comfortable in my own skin, but losing the weight gave me the confidence to end my relationship.”
After her divorce last year, she took more drastic action. “[My chest was] like two walnuts in a pair of socks. Pregnancy does a number on your body,” she says. “I was embarrassed, and I knew if I was going to get intimate with someone again, I had to do something!” Botox and a boob job followed, giving her the body she always craved.
Nora Novick, a home-care agency nurse, felt less adventurous after the end of her marriage. “My husband used to say, ‘So what? You are beautiful,’ ” she sighs. “Now it’s like, ugh, I have to start over again.”
Cosmetic dermatologist Neal Schultz restored her confidence. “I am 58, but now I look about 45,” she says. “I feel great about myself, and that exudes through my pores!”
Being back on the market is a definite motivator.
Sue King, a 50-something Upper East Side schoolteacher, just separated from her husband of 12 years. She has decided to use her upcoming summer break to get a necklift and lower-facelift from plastic surgeon Steven Pearlman.
“Dating again is my incentive,” she says.
Estranged husbands, understandably, tend not to be supportive. “It’s always a point of contention and anger for a husband because he figures the procedure is being done to attract a new man, and he’s right,” says Arnold Rutkin, a divorce attorney. “In one oft-quoted case, the husband’s lawyer was going on about the wife’s breast implants, and the judge, who didn’t see the relevancy, quipped, ‘Does somebody want equitable distribution of this lady’s breasts?’ ”
In acrimonious divorces, some women get satisfaction out of reclaiming their bodies.
“After having kids, my body wasn’t that hot, but now I look good and I feel sexier,” says 42-year-old Upper East Sider Rachel Parks, who ended her 10-year marriage last summer when she caught her husband cheating.
Plastic surgeon Norman Rowe removed fat from her stomach and added small breast implants to restore her shape and self-image. “When I see my [ex] husband, I have anger, and it’s like, ‘Ha, look what you are missing now!’ ” says Parks.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that for some women, their husbands are unwittingly footing all or part of the bill with their alimony payments.
“He deserved to partially pay for me to look good — I feel I earned it,” says Sheffield. “There was a certain satisfaction in his seeing me look like this, especially when he saw me with my new boyfriend.”
The women who have chosen the cosmetic doctor’s table over the shrink’s couch are feeling no guilt. “They say that beauty comes from within,” smiles Solomon. “But it also comes from within Dr. Peredo’s office.”