The Body, Shopped

Want a flatter stomach? Done. A more gravity-resistant butt? Absolutely. Whatever contour of your body you’d like redrawn, there is a treatment or surgery to do it —and the options are constantly evolving. We uncovered a few of the most exciting right now.

- Loren Savini

The stomach: You can get rid of small, stubborn pockets of fat in this area by freezing, heating, or destroying fat cells with ultrasound energy. (Current options include CoolSculpting, SculpSure, and UltraShape, respectively.) But anything more than a slight reduction in abdominal fat still calls for a tummy tuck. Conveniently, the procedure has gotten, well, less inconvenient. A new adhesive called TissuGlu eliminates the need to drain the fluid that fills the large space created between the muscles and overlying tissue after the surgery. Prior to its existence, tummy-tuck recovery involved having a drain, at home, for one to two weeks. Which is gross and weird but was part of the deal. “TissuGlu seals the tissues together after a tummy tuck so that there is no space that can fill with fluid,” says Los Angeles plastic surgeon Steven Teitelbaum. It also might result in less-noticeable scars. More good news: A new numbing injection called Exparel can make the initial tummy- tuck recovery less painful, says Joubin Gabbay, a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles.