By: Mark Solomon, MD

You see them every time you reach the checkout stand at the grocery store – celebrities who look great on the covers of magazines like Elle and Cosmo, right next to celebrities whose cosmetic surgery missteps are fodder for the tabloids. You’ve probably asked yourself: What separates the good from the bad? Here are a couple lessons you can learn from the celebrity “do’s and don’ts” you see in the magazines:

• Target key areas. This is a fairly easy one for most celebrities, because they often have very beautiful or handsome features to begin with. But it’s important to think carefully about which areas of your face or body are your biggest trouble spots, and then to focus your improvement on these areas. For instance, if you feel your face looks “old,” it may be a case in which a face lift alone will produce very attractive results.

  Your Lesson: It’s highly unlikely that you will need an “extreme makeover” of all your features to look your very best – a little really can go a long way.

• Seek subtle change. This point is particularly true for facial plastic surgery. How many times have you seen a celebrity go in for cosmetic surgery, only to come out with a face that just isn’t really recognizable? They may look too pulled, too lifted, too artificial. There are many reasons why such results can occur, but a lot of times it’s because these celebrities are trying too hard to recapture the look of their youth, rather than enhancing their appearance in a way that looks attractive and healthy for their true age.

  Your Lesson: Hollywood may be “youth obsessed,” but chances are you’ll get a more satisfying result if your goal is age-appropriate elegance.

• Stick with a professional. Celebrities have access to some of the best plastic surgeons in the world, right? Well you wouldn’t necessarily know it from some of the unattractive results you see in magazines and on TV. Of course, the celebrities that do choose their surgeon wisely are the ones who stay at the top of all those “Most Beautiful People” lists year after year.

  Your Lesson: Investigate the surgeons in your area, paying particular attention to before and after photos of prior patients and the distinction of the doctor’s credentials (board-certified plastic surgeons are specially trained in a wide range of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery techniques).

As a Philadelphia plastic surgeon, I’m pretty far removed from the whole Hollywood scene, but I tell my patients that they can refine their own surgical goals and enhance their surgical results by taking a close look at some of their favorite celebrities.