‘The Ugly Face Of Beauty’ Is A Gross (And Grossly Intriguing) Spin Through Plastic Surgery Nightmares

Dr. Christian Jessen is here to help.

The British physician and television presenter has made a career out of attempting to destigmatize embarrassing and taboo medical issues. On shows like the long-running Embarrassing Bodies, Jessen has profiled real patients with real problems they’ve been too ashamed to speak with their personal doctors. One especially fertile ground for this discussion is the massive and still-growing field of plastic surgery — and that’s where Jessen sets his sights in the miniseries The Ugly Face of Beauty, now available for streaming on Netflix.

The show’s ambitions are large, and its approach is on multiple fronts: Jessen wants to expose the dangers of plastic surgery and the bad actors who push it on patients in ways they shouldn’t. He’s not just showing horror-show cases of plastic surgery gone wrong — though if you’re looking for that, he’s got it, in full and gory detail. He’s not just advising people about the risks, though he does that, speaking to insecure teenagers and unsuspecting clients both. He’s not just conducting hidden-camera stings on shady clinics. He’s taking on a whole industry.

To put it another way: he’s out of order? No, you’re out of order! The whole system’s out of order!

It’s a bit of a scattershot approach, but it’s mostly an effective one. In the show’s four episodes, we meet a variety of different people from different backgrounds, with a range of cosmetic procedures and motivations for having had them done — or for wanting to have them done in the future. We see how clinics use aggressive sales techniques to convince people to have surgeries they don’t need — or more ambitious surgeries than they thought they wanted — and how those can go terribly, painfully, grotesquely wrong.

There’s breast augmentations — deflated, misshapen, bruised and blackened. There’s face implants that have left unsightly lumps on people who simply wanted fuller cheeks. Botched tummy tucks and ham-fisted face lifts; there’s something for everyone, as long as everyone wants to see graphic images of gross medical malpractice. It’s not just rubbernecking at a wreck, Jessen insists: “We’re telling their stories, and we’re exposing their scars,” he declares in one voice-over, “and we’re bringing in a team of surgeons to analyze and rectify their problems.”

Make no mistake, though: there’s plenty of time for gawking. One segment follows a young woman — an aspiring model and cousin of the tabloid-fodder British soccer star Wayne Rooney — as she travels to Cuba seeking budget-priced breast augmentations, lip injections and liposuction. The segment’s intent is to expose the ways in which the lower cost of surgeries abroad have been packaged into a surreal sort of tourism, encouraging procedures on people who — like the young Ms. Rooney — don’t need them. It’s a real issue, and one that could be handled in a dry, businesslike manner if this were a newsmagazine show or strict documentary. It’s not, though, so we see her journey through from ignoring words of caution through to passing out drunk on a bar floor two days after her surgeries.

In another segment, Jessen sets up a mobile clinic on a busy street in Essex. This is a familiar move for him, mirroring the mobile-consultation clinics he uses in the show Embarrassing Bodies to diagnose hidden medical issues for the general public. Here, he’s not simply attempting to educate, though — he’s attempting to trick people. Fake surgery consultants offer real people discount surgery packages, plying them with fake champagne and promises of pampered care — until Jessen springs out and explains it’s all a ruse meant to show how easily the cosmetic-surgery-industrial complex can persuade you to get procedures you didn’t even know you wanted — with doctors whose credentials you haven’t checked. It’s clearly embarrassing for the would-be patients, but that’s Jessen’s intent: a little shame to avoid a lot of pain later on.

One of the most well-intentioned — and effective — segments in the show takes Jessen into a secondary school, speaking to teen-aged students about the perils of cosmetic procedures. The young women and men, every bit as insecure as we all were as teenagers, readily admit that they’d be open to undergoing surgeries. Jessen doesn’t shame them for this, but encourages them to think of natural, unaltered bodies as beautiful — while also exposing them to graphic images of the risks they could face if they succumb to societal pressures without due caution.

There’s a wide and growing range of gross-out medical shows available on streaming outlets, and if that’s your particular poison, The Ugly Face of Beauty has plenty for you — bloody, gory, gristly imagery and plenty of glad-that’s-not-me schadenfreude to be seen. It’s also got a mission, though, and despite a sometimes meandering focus and questionable methods, a good heart.

This show wants to save you a lot of future pain, and if it’s got to show you some blood or make you look like a fool in order to accomplish its mission, so be it. You’ll thank them later.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.