Dr. Bass introduces the idea of a "beauty thermostat"—your personal comfort level with change. Some people have a high-sensitivity thermostat, noticing every small shift and wanting to act quickly. Others have a low-sensitivity one, waiting until changes are much more visible before taking action.
Neither approach is wrong. It's about self-awareness and balance. Those who act early may need smaller tweaks but risk over-focusing, while those who wait may face bigger fixes later. Dr. Bass reminds us that perfection isn't the goal; most people see the whole picture, not every detail.
If you see the issue, your surgeon agrees, and there's a reliable fix, go for it. If not, it's okay to pause. The sweet spot lies in the middle: caring about your appearance without letting it control you.
Listen to our previous episode about the concept of a Beauty Lens
About Dr. Lawrence Bass
Innovator. Industry veteran. In-demand Park Avenue board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Lawrence Bass is a true master of his craft, not only in the OR but as an industry pioneer in the development and evaluation of new aesthetic technologies. With locations in both Manhattan (on Park Avenue between 62nd and 63rd Streets) and in Great Neck, Long Island, Dr. Bass has earned his reputation as the plastic surgeon for the most discerning patients in NYC and beyond.
To learn more, visit the Bass Plastic Surgery website or follow the team on Instagram @drbassnyc
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Transcript
Summer Hardy (00:01):
Welcome to Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Class, the podcast where we explore controversies and breaking issues in plastic surgery. I'm your co-host, Summer Hardy, a clinical assistant at Bass Plastic Surgery in New York City. I'm excited to be here with Dr. Lawrence Bass, Park Avenue plastic surgeon, educator and technology innovator. The title of today's episode is Beauty Thermostat. This is the sister episode to Beauty Lens. Looking at the main approaches to thinking about our beauty needs and which features to address. So tell me, Dr. Bass, what is the beauty thermostat and why is it important?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (00:37):
Well, beauty lens and beauty thermostat, these are principles that help define how patients think about their appearance and decide about treatments because everyone decides this differently. So everyone has their individual set point or focus for their beauty lens and set point for their beauty thermostat. So this is more a principle that you can actually use as an analytical tool to understand and channel your thoughts, making it easier to choose what to do and feel confident in that decision. Avoiding pitfalls and understanding the motivations a little bit along the way. The beauty thermostat is mated with the beauty lens, which we discussed in a sister podcast that has already released. The two principles together embody a critical paradigm in understanding how people identify features of their appearance that they're dissatisfied with and choose how to pursue plastic surgery treatments. Beauty thermostat is about sensitivity. How much variation has to occur in your appearance before the thermostat flips on, and you go ahead with the treatment rather than whether the temperature is set to high or low, because that's really how a thermostat works.
(02:07):
It doesn't keep you at exactly a certain temperature. A little bit of temperature change past where it's set will not turn the thermostat on, but once the temperature changes enough, suddenly the thermostat is on and action is being taken to heat or cool the room. Same idea here. If there's a tiny change, you're not going to chase treatments. You wake up, you look a little different than after you clean yourself up before going out of the house. But once there's a big enough change, you choose to go ahead and start doing plastic surgery treatments, how much that change needs to be differs from person to person, and that's what we're talking about.
Summer Hardy (03:01):
Okay. Thanks for explaining all of that. What happens when your thermostat is set on low or high?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (03:07):
So there's some virtues to high sensitivity and virtues to low sensitivity as well as some pitfalls or flaws. Like everything in life, there are good things and bad things about being any particular way. So if you're very sensitive, you have a high sensitivity beauty thermostat, you'll catch things early when they're still small, when a small fix may work to address them, and you're not likely to miss or ignore things for very long. The virtue of having a low sensitivity beauty thermostat is that you'll only chase the major issues, ones that you're sure are meaningful and it's a very efficient both time and money efficient and simple way to approach your appearance.
Summer Hardy (04:02):
That makes sense. What are the flaws of being set very low or very high?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (04:07):
So as I said, of course, nothing in life is all good or all bad. So there are flaws, and if you are a high sensitivity beauty thermostat, the problem with that is produces a lot of anxiety. Every little thing you see starts to be bad enough that you want to chase it. So that's a hard way to live, and it's hard to define a stopping point because there's always something that's perceptible and is identified as a problem. That being said, if you have a very low sensitivity for your beauty thermostat, you never really look your best or even close to it. You only chase an issue when it becomes really obvious and you identify issues late in the game, which means a bigger fix is likely to be needed.
Summer Hardy (05:00):
I'm starting to see how significant the consequences can be at the end of the day. What is the right set point?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (05:07):
Well, that's the million dollar question. The first thing to understand is there's no perfect or ideal set point, but the most benefit probably occurs somewhere in the middle, moderation in all things. So where exactly can change over time based on what your life priorities are? And it's going to differ from individual to individual.
Summer Hardy (05:33):
So we should look closely to see what's going on right?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (05:37):
Closely, but not too closely. If you think it's perfect, you're just not looking close enough, but just because it's not perfect doesn't mean you should do something about it. In other words, don't be so sensitive with your beauty thermostat that you do something about everything you can perceive.
Summer Hardy (05:57):
Can you give some examples of why you shouldn't be preoccupied with perfect?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (06:03):
Well, it's like the trauma of the magnifying mirror. When you look at yourself in a picture or you look at yourself in a full length mirror when you're dressing, when your friends look at you, your family members, your coworkers, they see the big picture. And that's how we project ourselves all day, every day. When you look in the magnifying mirror, all of a sudden you see all kinds of teeny little things that the outside world really doesn't see, and that really are not critical parts of our appearance. So it is a very ego deflating experience to look closely in a magnifying mirror, and that's probably a good enough reason why you shouldn't do that. If you look at a burnished or polished metal or glass surface to the naked eye, that might look perfectly smooth, but if you look under a microscope, it's anything but smooth.
(07:01):
But that doesn't mean glass isn't smooth and we can't see through it. It just means that nothing is perfect. Nothing is exactly how it projects at a working scale when you look at it on a tiny scale. The final example is thinking of celebrities. So celebrities are in this situation where beauty and perfection must be achieved at a really, really high level. The level of detail is important, not because making the celebrity themselves crazy or materially affecting how they think about themselves, but it's affecting how much work they can get. And so they don't worry about it the same way. It's about work. It's not about their sense of self. But that being said, because their ability to get work is critically important, it's a very hard way to live, which fortunately, most of us are not held to that same standard in terms of our daily lives.
Summer Hardy (08:14):
Got it. So if you know you're very high or low, should you try to change or just be the way you are?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (08:22):
That's a very philosophical question, Summer, and changing your personality or outlook is one of the most difficult things for people to do to some extent. We all have to be who we are, and your plastic surgeon will flex to your set point. Still knowing where you're set may help you guard against excess at one extreme or the other, and do a better job of creating some balance in your decision making.
Summer Hardy (08:53):
That makes a lot of sense. And how much should we listen to our friends and family about our appearance?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (09:00):
Well, we talked about this issue a little bit with the beauty lens episode. What you should be worrying about is how you feel about things. But we do have to be affected at least a little bit by what family, friends, people in the public see how they look at us. We want to project a certain image. Mostly we have to be happy with how we look, but we have to be cognizant, at least in a small degree, that we look presentable to the outside world. But what people in the outside world see and what they say are two very different things, and sometimes they can be really, really picky over small, inconsequential details. Picture your mother when you were a teenager criticizing everything about what you did. Sometimes people can be mean, even if they're your friends or family members, and sometimes they can be totally oblivious. You have some very obvious feature that's not good, or you're healing from a treatment or a procedure and things don't look normal, but they completely miss it. So in my view, at the end of the day, there's not a lot of probative value or truth and what you're getting in feedback from the outside world. There are too many other motivations going on.
Summer Hardy (10:33):
Okay, now bottom line it for me. How should these tools be used to help people decide what features they don't like and what treatments to go ahead with?
Dr. Lawrence Bass (10:42):
So these were what I call deciding rules. And my big rules of thumb that I tell patients over and over and over in my practice, go like this. If you see it and your plastic surgeon sees it and it bothers you and we have a reliable way to fix it or improve it substantially, then it's reasonable to go ahead. If the patient sees it but the surgeon doesn't, they can't really fix it for you. If the surgeon sees it but the patient doesn't or they don't care about it, then there's really no reason to go ahead and do anything just because the surgeon sees it. And if there's no reliable way to get a substantial improvement, it's probably better to hold off. Overall, you have to find a way to accept that it's an imperfect world, and this is an infinitely frustrating experience for perfectionistic plastic surgeons and perfectionistic patients.
(11:50):
And that's what most of us are in the world of surgery, perfectionists. But it's a universal truth and an always condition that things are going to be imperfect. So we have to try really hard to get things as close to perfect as we can get, but not make ourselves crazy because we don't, at the end of the day, get to literal perfection. So overall, what this means in terms of beauty thermostat is that we have more trouble from high sensitivity thermostat settings than lower sensitivity settings. Way too low and your appearance can be very off-putting to others. We do still live in a social group where issues of grooming and hygiene impact how we fit in and how people respond to us. But overall, your inner peace and it relies on having some perspective in life about how much time, energy, and money it's worth investing into your beauty and how much it's worth stressing about. You can't have that be all day every day, but you can't ignore it. So a middle ground is almost always right.
Summer Hardy (13:11):
Thank you Dr. Bass for laying out these powerful concepts that explain what drives patient decision making about plastic surgery treatments. Thank you for listening to the Park Avenue Plastic Surgery Class podcast. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, write a review and share the show with your friends. Be sure to join us next time to avoid missing all the great content that is coming your way. If you want to contact us with comments or questions, we'd love to hear from you, send us an email at [email protected] or DM us on Instagram @drbassnyc.
