There are only two female plastic surgeons in the Asheville area. For women, getting into the business can be as tricky as any procedure.

by Janet Hurley . photos by Matt Rose

In med school at Wake Forest, Brenda Draper thought she’d be a pediatrician. After a rotation in plastic surgery, though, where she witnessed the reconstruction of a face—and, essentially, the patient’s life—she changed her mind.

But then she had to change the minds of those who could grant her access to the mostly-male world of surgery. Surprisingly, it was a female dean who tried hardest to dissuade her. The long haul of school and residency during a woman’s prime child-rearing years seemed untenable—but Draper applied and was the first woman admitted to the Wake Forest plastic surgery program. She never looked back. “I like to think that I opened the dean’s eyes,” says Draper, now 50, with a solo practice in Asheville. Perhaps she would have opened the dean’s eyes to a woman like Collette Stern, who has a solo practice at the Plastic Surgery Center in Asheville. She’s just now 35 and a graduate of the Medical College of Georgia. At her residency in Salt Lake City, Stern says, she was never “treated differently” as a woman. Still, it’s telling that Draper and Stern are the only two female plastic surgeons in Western North Carolina.

That’s not unusual, according to the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Out of 5,970 active, board-certified plastic surgeons in the United States, only 735 are women. But the numbers are changing. Since 2001, 30 to 40 women take and pass their plastic surgery board exams each year, reflecting the increase of women in surgical specialties generally over the past decade. A recent study by the American College of Surgeons suggests the rise may be associated with the increased number of female surgical faculty, on-site childcare during residencies and policies regarding gender-based discrimination and maternity leave. “All the time I was in med school and residency, my parents had to be happy with a ‘grand-dog,’” Draper laughs. She waited until she had established her first practice before having children.

Stern and her husband, a pulmonologist, have both a ten-month-old and a three-year-old, so maintaining balance is tough. In addition to her elective surgeries, she is on call for reconstructive surgeries including trauma related-cases such as facial injuries from car accidents. It was just such a case that prompted her decision to become a plastic surgeon, when she was 13 and a hospital volunteer. “I saw how the artistry of plastic surgery changed this woman,” Stern says. “I decided right then that this is what I wanted to do.”

For Draper, who moved to Asheville last year, the area was appealing as a place that’s both beautiful and “more grounded” than too-busy Dallas, where, she says, a lot of parents picked up kids from school in Ferraris. “In Asheville, people take a moment,” she says. Stern, who has lived here since 2008, likes Asheville’s more “natural” approach to cosmetic surgery—if there is such a thing. “Most of my cosmetic work is about restoration and rejuvenation,” Dr. Stern says, “to make the face in the mirror match the youthfulness the patient feels.” Dr. Draper agrees. “Asheville is not a place where bigger is better. The women here, and the men, don’t want people to know they’ve had something done.”

Stern and Draper’s patient bases mimic national statistics, with women accounting for some 90 percent of cosmetic surgeries, almost half of those in the 40-60 age range. “I do quite a number of “mommy makeovers,” Stern says. She has a special interest in breast surgery, including reconstruction after mastectomies and breast augmentation—which leads all elective cosmetic surgeries across the nation, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Surprisingly, both Draper and Stern estimate that a small portion of their cosmetic surgery patients are wealthy—most, they say, are middle-income women who want to change one thing, like, say, sagging eyelids or jowls.

Neither Stern nor Draper see their work as contributing to the body-image issues that plague many women. “If something bothers you,” Draper says, “that has value.” When she started her first job in Atlanta, the owner of the practice said to her: “Just let me know when you want me to do your upper eyelids.” She was offended and told him she wasn’t bothered by the hooding—something that ran in her family. But five years later, she had the procedure done.

Both doctors go beyond tummy tucks. Draper recalls the moving process of assisting gang members with tattoo removal, and Stern still gets updates on a 24-hour surgery she participated in, separating twin girls who were conjoined but are now thriving.

The two docs also both chuckle about social situations in which people sidle up to them and say, “I’ve been thinking about getting my _____done. What do you think?” Most people are curious, if nothing else. As Stern points out, variety is another perk of the business. “Plastic surgery is artistry, and you never do the same surgery twice.”