A certain response can be expected when you publicly admit to plastic surgery. There will be a small (but mighty!) number of supporters who applaud your brutal honesty. There will be even more people who feel compelled to call you fake. And then there are the commenters who are so confused by your personal decision, they can only muster up the brainpower to label you insecure. Anastasia Karanikolaou—better known as @StassieBaby on Instagram—has heard every combination of these responses loud and clear. But instead of backing down, she's opening up.
If Karanikolaou seems familiar to you, then you must follow Kylie Jenner's social media antics. As one of Jenner's best friends, Karanikolaou has built a name for herself as a model, it-girl, and influencer, racking up an astonishing 2.2 million followers on Instagram alone. Her feed is a mix of flawlessly-lit selfies and promoted posts —but it was a shot from inside Dr. Ashkan Ghavami's office, a celebrity plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, that recently stood out from the rest. "So excited to have met with @drghavami to discuss something I've been thinking about for a while! Stay tuned for more," she captioned the image.
"I used to have the cutest, perkiest boobs when I was young," 19-year-old Karanikolaou told BAZAAR.com. "Someone had told me that if you wear an underwire bra it makes your boobs sag. I had cute boobs so I would never wear a bra. Overtime, I found out that whoever told me that was completely wrong." Like many women, one of Karanikolaou's breasts was almost a full cup size larger than the other, and that asymmetry caused sagging. So after mulling over her options for the last two or three years, she made an appointment with Ghavami to see what could be done.
"I was very open to sharing—plastic surgery is nothing be ashamed of."
Drooping breasts have "nothing to do with age," says Ghavami. "Some people are just made that way." Though it's most commonly reported after breast feeding, sagging breasts can also occur after weight loss or skin damage. But when your breasts are asymmetrical, it can impact how you fit into bras, bikinis, and other clothing—as well as your overall health. "It causes this weird back pain where the heavier breast is. If you have one that's almost 30-40 percent bigger or droopier, walking around or—especially if you don't have a bra on—one neck and shoulder is going to hurt more than the other," says the doctor. In Karanikolaou's case, she wasn't able to fit into certain items of clothing on photo shoots, which also impacted her work. After a consultation, Karanikolaou and Ghavami settled on a breast lift without implants. This would add volume right where it was needed to regain symmetry, but still leave the most natural effect.
Karanikolaou had the surgery two weeks ago and is in the final stages of healing, feeling almost back to normal with no lingering pain. (Though in expert hands, she was admittedly nervous for her first time under the knife, having watched the horror flick Awake.) What makes a breast lift different than a regular breast augmentation, other than the lack of an implant, is that it's a more invasive surgery. The procedure involves a tightening of the surrounding breast tissue so that the entire breast sits higher up on the chest. Smaller breasts need smaller incisions, since there is less tissue to lift.
If a patient needs a lift as well as additional volume, then Ghavami will insert an implant or go ahead with a fat transfer (Karanikolaou declined), which involves the harvesting of fat through liposuction. Ghavami then uses the patient's own fat to plump the breasts and better define the cleavage area. What drew Karanikolaou to Ghavami's practice was his ability to lift her breasts without the need for an implant, which she says other doctors had insisted on.
Recovery time varies, but a typical breast lift patient can heal in three to five days, says Ghavami. If the patient also received liposuction, they can expect to be sore in those areas for seven days. After any breast procedure, you'll need to wear a compression bra for several weeks, and you can be back in the gym in about a month depending on how your incisions heal. A standard breast augmentation or lift can cost around $10,000, but if implants or fat transfer are added, that price balloons to anywhere from $22,000 to $55,000.
Of course, you could have all the surgery in the world done and simply keep it to yourself. But that's not Karanikolaou's style. "I was very open to sharing—plastic surgery is nothing be ashamed of," she says. "A lot of people think plastic surgery is only for cosmetic reasons, to change something you're insecure about. All my comments were saying, 'you're so insecure, you're so insecure,' which is the complete opposite. If I was insecure, I wouldn't have showed it. I wanted to show people that there's nothing to be ashamed of— that it's so common for girls to have this issue and you can do something to fix it."
Ghavami, who has also famously operated on Iggy Azalea, believes Karanikolaou is using her platform to set a positive example for young women. "People shouldn't feel bad about getting plastic surgery; they should feel no more worse than admitting to putting fake eyelashes in," he says. "People like her and Iggy are paving the way for being more honest about their surgery and beauty beyond their glam teams."
Jenna Rosenstein
Beauty Director
Jenna Rosenstein is the Beauty Director at Harper's BAZAAR across both print and digital. While attending NYU, she held internships at Women’s Wear Daily, Bloomingdale’s, Harper’s BAZAAR, and Allure, the latter of which she parlayed into her first job as the Beauty Assistant. She left Allure three years later as the Senior Beauty Editor. She spent a few months at Refinery29 overseeing branded content in the same title, before finally landing back at BAZAAR to manage all beauty content. When she's not testing every lipstick known to mankind, getting zapped by new lasers, or interviewing experts and celebrities, you can find Rosenstein at home in New Jersey with her son, husband, and black cat named Maddie.
