Cali, the state capital of Valle del Cauca, Colombia, is home to a whole bunch of plastic surgeons. More people travel to Colombia for operations than anywhere else on this planet, the vast majority of them heading to Cali, and with annual profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars town has grow to be generally known as Colombia’s ‘Silicone’ Valley. And it’s not only the foreigners keeping the industry going. Colombia ranks third in the world for probably the most variety of surgeries per capita, and the ladies of Cali spend a large chunk of their income on treatments and procedures to change and reshape their bodies.

The overwhelming majority of ladies in Colombia – and particularly in Cali, the third largest and probably the most racially-mixed city – have black or indigenous blood running through their veins. Despite this, the photographs of female beauty promoted on television programmes, commercials and throughout the pages of glossy magazines are likely to be of tall, thin, fine-featured, light-skinned, blonde women. It’s precisely this distance between real women and sweetness ideals that enables the industry to reap hundreds of thousands of dollars every year by offering the chance for an extreme cultural makeover.

In Cali, just about all major hospitals offer plastic and cosmetic surgery, and lots of operations are covered by insurance. Cosmetic surgery is trendy amongst young women for his or her quinceañera coming-out party, their parents gifting them larger butts or breasts or a recent nose. Winning female participants of reality shows and sweetness contests are sometimes given prizes that include surgical procedures donated by the cosmetic surgery clinics that sponsor the shows. Famous actresses, celebrities, and influencers often broadcast their surgeries survive social media, attracting huge audiences. Model Andrea Valdiri offered her 7.3 million Instagram followers $20 tickets to observe her surgery. The ticket website crashed after receiving over 500,000 visits in the primary 10 minutes.

“In Cali, top cosmetic surgeons are considered sculptors with scalpels, aesthetic masters whose specialised work can beautify a lady”

Cosmetic surgery, like magic products or religion, is consumed in the assumption that it should help women discover a husband, solve marital problems, cure depression or help get a higher-paying job. Within the sex industry, cam girls and sex staff with surgically altered bodies earn extra money, and might charge clients extra within the upscale brothels or as escorts. 

On a global scale, Colombia promotes itself worldwide as a destination for medical tourism. In 2014, an estimated 41,000 foreigners visited the country for medical reasons, spending $216 million, due to the relatively low price of procedures available. Breast augmentation might be had for around $4,000, while a combo package of liposculpture, breast lift and fatty gluteal graft can cost $7,000, each of which include two days in a hotel plus sightseeing around town before and after recovering from surgery. 

In Cali, the pharmaceutical and medical associations are currently working with the local government to brand the sweetness industry Estética Cali and town boasts over 50 cosmetic surgery clinics. With their extravagant, eye-catching design and architecture, these clinics are easily identifiable. Some display classical beauty salon style architecture with fancy lettering on their signs, while many more moderen ones appear to be pop-ups, with seductive, oversized façades made out of flat, shiny surfaces. 

Several cosmetic surgery clinics are named after top-shelf European artists, comparable to Picasso, Matisse, and Dali. In Cali, top cosmetic surgeons are considered sculptors with scalpels, aesthetic masters whose specialised work can beautify a lady, and who charge accordingly. Just like the paintings by international master painters, the facades of the highest clinics proudly display the signature of the local artist, on this case, the lead surgeon of the clinic. 

It hasn’t all the time been this manner. Within the Fifties, when the primary aesthetic procedures were being performed in Colombia, cosmetic surgery was considered a sin by the powerful Catholic Church, which meant few women dared try to enhance on God’s work. During that point, nevertheless, Pope Pius XII gave a chat at a global medical congress in Rome where he said: “If the body is a receptacle of the soul, it’s correct that the body tries to be as perfect because the soul itself,” which was taken by women in Cali as giving direct permission to enjoy the advantages of cosmetic surgery.

It was within the Nineteen Eighties that the industry really took off, just because the Cali Cartel began raking in billions of tax-free dollars a 12 months from sales of cocaine. Drug traffickers were a blessing for the industry as their wives and girlfriends became among the biggest consumers of cosmetic surgery, with no price too high. Bosses from the Cali Cartel bankroll their women to grow to be beauty queens or centerfolds, paying for narco-muñecas (narco-dolls) to enjoy all of the bountiful wonders that cosmetic surgery can offer. 

The exaggerated curves of those women’s bodies haven’t only given rise to the high concentration of cosmetic surgery clinics in Tequendama, a residential area where most of the powerful narcos have homes, but have also reshaped the style industry throughout the city. Traditionally mannequins have been designed to be hangers for exhibiting clothes and thus thin like models. In Cali, nevertheless, mannequins are endowed with huge breasts, reflecting one of the crucial outstanding elements of town’s idealised image of a lady’s beauty and sensuality.

“Even when the surgery is successful and there isn’t any medical fall-out afterwards, cosmetic surgery can leave deep emotional scars inside a lady”

It’s not only silicone implants which might be being stuffed into these women’s bodies. In 2020, 10 people from a drug trafficking gang generally known as “Los Cirujanos” (“The Surgeons”) were sent to jail after they were found to be surgically inserting breast and leg implants, which mimicked the silicone versions, crammed with liquid cocaine into women. One Colombian woman was arrested at a European airport for the way in which her butt had grow to be deformed after the long flight.

Women unable to afford costly surgery in fashionable clinics in Tequendama subject their bodies to extra risks. Besides the certified surgeons in town, there are millions of unlicensed, untrained doctors offering procedures. In a single recent sting operation, 4 dozen plastic surgeons in Colombia were found using false degrees supposedly obtained in Brazil, Peru or Argentina. An estimated 20-30 per cent of plastic surgeries performed in Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, are performed by doctors without cosmetic surgery training or performed in unauthorized clinics by non-medical personnel.

To maintain costs reasonably priced, these informal clinics, a few of that are positioned within the garages of single family houses, use pirated products, comparable to breast implants imported illegally from China. Probably the most common liquids injected into women’s butts are paraffin and silicone, but even cheaper liquids, comparable to baby, vegetable and automobile oils, are sometimes used. A lot of those that inject these chemicals into women’s bodies will not be doctors, licensed or unlicensed, but somewhat housewives or neighbors seeking to complement their income. 

Even when done in probably the most chic and expensive clinics, these procedures might be dangerous with complications comparable to lumps, skin thickening, hyper-pigmentation, vein and arterial malformations, inflammation and arthritis often grow to be chronic, and the buildup of those substances within the body over time could cause blood poisoning. Low-cost materials increase risks of infection and disease, in addition to the probability that the girl’s body rejects such foreign matter. Every week in Cali there are news stories of ladies losing their lives or body parts after botched surgery or injections with toxic chemicals. In Colombia, 14 women died during cosmetic surgical procedures in 2015, 30 in 2016, with by far most of those deaths in Cali, and most of those in garage clinics.

Even when the surgery is successful and there isn’t any medical fall-out afterwards, cosmetic surgery can leave deep emotional scars inside a lady. Many ladies who’ve had surgery grow to be nervous about having their surgically-enlarged bodyparts being man-handled, and sex becomes complicated and potentially dangerous for ladies as implants are delicate and might explode when subjected to extreme physical activity or heat. Not only that, but body parts can are likely to lose sensibility after surgery. Breast implants require slicing through delicate skin and destroying the capillaries that offer blood to the nipples, thus diminishing their sensitivity while at the identical time increasing irritation. 

Cosmetic surgery often alienates women from their very own bodies, leaving them sexy but sexless, mere mannequins for men to ogle. The designer storefronts of cosmetic surgery clinics in Tequendama which allude to the promise of ideal beauty (or not less than an excellent booty) are to architecture what the mannequins in Cali are to real women.