As a board-certified plastic surgeon who has practiced in New York City for more than 35 years, I'd like to respond to Kirsten Fleming's column (NY Post) on Jennifer Lawrence's very public musings about cosmetic surgery.

Ms. Lawrence is extraordinarily talented, beautiful, and blessed with a wonderfully self- deprecating sense of humor. Like Ms. Fleming, I hope she leaves her lovely face alone for now. Where I differ is in what her openness means. I see Ms. Lawrence as a powerful and accomplished voice for women of all ages. By speaking openly rather than pretending her looks are effortless, she helps women see through the illusion of "natural" perfection.

I agree with most of Ms. Fleming's concerns because I have been preaching the same message for years. In numerous pieces for HuffPost, I have written about the pitfalls of cosmetic surgery undertaken for the wrong reasons. My book The Beauty Quotient Formula (Hay House) was meant as a beauty-and-confidence guide to help women raise their "Beauty Quotient" without going under the knife. It may sound as though I was trying to put myself out of business, but my reasoning was simple. I had grown frustrated turning away patients whose expectations no operation could meet. One woman believed a facelift would end her husband's affair with a younger woman. Another, an attractive but naive young woman, wanted breast augmentation because her new boyfriend preferred larger breasts and had offered to pay.

Surgery would never deliver what these patients were really after, and when it didn't, I would inevitably share the blame. I also agree that women today are pushed into an unfair contest with models and movie stars who have an entire beauty arsenal at their disposal. That competition is impossible to win and deflating to attempt.

That is exactly why Ms. Lawrence's blunt honesty is so inspiring.

About a decade ago, I wrote a HuffPost piece titled "Gisele Bündchen Missed a Wonderful Opportunity". The supermodel had quietly undergone breast augmentation in Paris. Before the truth came out, she repeatedly credited her figure to diet, yoga and her skincare line. The implied message was that such perfection could be achieved naturally, a standard no ordinary woman could match.

She could instead have told women around the world that motherhood brings enormous joy and, for nearly every woman, physical changes to the breasts and body. Imagine the most admired supermodel on earth declaring, "I'm not perfect. My body changed after two babies, I'm getting older, and that's OK!" How refreshing that would have been. Ms. Lawrence has done the opposite, and her candor has made me an even bigger fan.

Robert M. Tornambe, MD, FACS New York, NY