The audience of the seminar at Saturday Club. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Doctors from the speciality Skin and Cosmetic Clinic at the Calcutta Medical Research Institute (CMRI) organised a seminar on cosmetic therapy, “separating facts from fiction”, at Saturday Club recently, where they talked to members about the benefits and scope of cosmetic surgery.

“Our idea is to make people aware of the various aspects of skin therapy and surgery and remove its surrounding myths,” said Sanjay Agarwal, consultant dermatologist at CMRI. “We also want to take a lot of these treatments out of the hands of hacks and do it in a proper manner from trained experts with good post-surgery care,” he added.

Cosmetic surgery, laser therapy and cosmetic dermatology, the seminar touched upon different aspects of this “desire-based therapy” that combines beauty with medicine, “starting from Rs 1,000 and going upto Rs 50,000”.

The doctors stressed that “almost 50 per cent” of their clients were male. And if the audience at Saturday Club was anything to go by, it is clear that beauty concerns have long ceased to be an exclusively female domain — if they ever were, that is.