Here’s why Utah has become one of America’s surprising plastic surgery hot spots
Billboards flank the freeway, encouraging you to “love thy selfie.”
On television and social media, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Jessi Draper openly discusses the work she’s had done: four breast procedures, a labiaplasty, a nostril reduction, and several other facial surgeries, one of which she is not happy with.
Heather Gay, one of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake,” estimates she’s spent $200,000 on cosmetic procedures.
Everywhere you look, it seems there are fuller lips, lifted faces and madeover mommies.
Yes, Utah has become a hot spot for plastic surgery.
But how hot? And why?
Surgeons, researchers and the data tell a fascinating story.
How much plastic surgery is there in Utah?
Maybe you’ve heard the claim that Utah leads the nation in plastic surgeries. But it’s hard to know how many cosmetic procedures are actually performed here.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons compiles data by region, piling Utah into a Western cohort that includes all of the states from California to Colorado. That region does have the highest rate of plastic surgeries nationwide — but it’s hard to know if that’s due to Hollywood or Holladay
Overall, surgeons don’t like to share their data.
“They all have their own and everybody keeps their data secret because they don’t want other people to know,” Dr. Bhupendra Patel, a Salt Lake City facial surgeon, pictured below, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
So that question had to be answered via proxies. An obvious one is the number of plastic surgeons in any given area; the thinking being that if there’s more plastic surgery somewhere, there are likely to be more plastic surgeons.
Perhaps the best count comes from the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES), which any doctor who takes health insurance is required to sign up for. This database indicates there are 110 plastic surgeons in Utah. On a per-capita basis, that ranks seventh in the U.S.
Most of those surgeons, 80 of them, are in Salt Lake County. Even on a per-capita basis, there are significantly more plastic surgeons in Salt Lake County than in any other county in the state. Twenty-three of the surgeons are affiliated with the University of Utah.
One caveat: Most plastic surgeries are performed on women (93%), and on people between 34 and 53 (75%). Utah does have a larger percentage of women between the ages of 25 and 54 — the Census age bracket most similar to the above — than other states. If you account for this demographic tendency, Utah ranks 20th in the nation in plastic surgeons per capita.
But Google search data indicates that interest in plastic surgery is growing in the state. Less than a decade ago, Utah ranked No. 26 in terms of the number of searches per capita for “plastic surgery.” In 2025, though? It ranked No. 3.
Utah’s cultural influences
In 2023, Brigham Young University professor and researcher Sarah Coyne and colleague Lauren Barnes looked at the crossover between body image, cosmetic surgery, and religiosity in a sample of 1,333 Latter-day Saints, aged 18 to 70, from across the nation.
According to their findings: “If you are saying that your religion is really important to you, you tend to have less cosmetic surgery,” Coyne said. “That’s odd, living in Utah, where we have a very high religious population, but then we have this certain stereotype of everyone having cosmetic surgery here.”
Nearly 14% of Latter-day Saints surveyed had major cosmetic surgery, and 20% had cosmetic enhancements. The study also found that people who believed in “costly grace” tended to have more cosmetic enhancements.
“Costly grace means this is a belief that I have to earn God’s love and grace,” Coyne said. “Now, the way that I earn that could be anything. It’s usually like I’ve got to be perfect. … Sometimes appearances are tied into that.”
Other factors contribute to Utah’s plastic surgery numbers, too.
“Perfectionism tends to be high in certain parts of our culture. [It] just kind of teaches you what you need to look like and need to be,” Coyne said. “The main reason that goes into this is that we have extremely unrealistic standards of beauty for women. Patriarchy, all of the different things, that’s why.”
Last year, the Utah Women & Leadership Project at Utah State University published a research brief on cosmetic surgery and body image among Utah women, which said the state’s “puzzling reputation for vanity and cosmetic surgery” is “fueled by a perfect storm of religious and cultural influences.”
The snapshot quotes research that has “found that homogenous societies, such as Utah, can have a contagion effect that pressures individuals into cosmetic surgery.”
Susan Madsen, the director of UWLP, said two of those homogenous characteristics in Utah are race — 89% of the state identifies as white — and religion.
“When we are around people that are like us, in terms of looks, skin, culture, religion, this competition for some reason arises,” Madsen said.
Reclaiming her body
Dr. Kevin Rose, a plastic surgeon with 25 years of experience, lists similar reasons as to why Utahns gravitate toward plastic surgery as Coyne and Madsen. He’s also noticed that his patients from Utah like to take care of themselves — particularly moms.
“So many women have a lot of children in Utah. There’s a lot of breastfeeding,” Rose said. “They just want to get their pre-baby body back.”
That was the case for Lehi resident Amy Williams, above, a patient of Rose’s who first saw him eight years ago for a breast augmentation — a decision she made to reclaim her body.
“I am a mom of six kids and I nursed all of my six babies, and I had absolutely no breast tissue left,” Williams said. “I wanted to restore what was lost.”
Williams is also a fitness influencer dedicated to losing weight and building muscle. She said that led her to have a “very flat chest.”
“I just felt so masculine, so I really wanted to just restore my femininity the first time around,” she said. Earlier this year, Williams did a reaugmentation with Rose since her implants had loosened from her body recomposition.
“As soon as I got it done, I was so happy with the results, I thought to myself, ‘Why didn’t I do this years ago?’” Williams said. “It completely restored my femininity and the way I felt about myself. It gave me confidence.”
Williams hears similar stories from the women who attend her weightlifting classes.
“It is absolutely a sacrifice to give up our body for pregnancy, nursing,” Williams said. “There’s some things that just can’t be restored without intervention or without help.”
In her work, Williams said seeing women go through various surgeries like mommy makeovers, tummy tucks or breast augmentations has a lasting effect.
“They turn into a more confident, outgoing, kind person. There’s just this beauty that they have that comes from within when they feel good about themselves,” she said.
What are the trends in plastic surgery?
Thanks to those societal factors, the explosion in plastic surgery interest in Utah has occurred differently in Utah compared to other states. Perhaps due to Utah’s focus on families, searches for “Mommy makeovers” are very common in Utah relative to other states.
Patel, who has done body work in the past, considers Utah “the capital for mommy makeovers.”
In searches for “breast augmentation,” Utah ties for the No. 1 spot with Connecticut, with Nevada’s unique economy coming in third.
Twenty years ago, Rose said larger implants were more popular. But these days, most people come in and ask for more subtle and natural breast implant options. In fact, the most popular procedure he does is a breast rejuvenation procedure.
Utahns aren’t enamored with all kinds of plastic surgery, though. Brazilian butt lifts — more frequently referred to as “BBLs” are rarely searched for in Utah. Instead, it’s Louisiana that comes in No. 1 here, with fellow southern states Georgia and Florida tying for second.
Rose has observed this data firsthand.
“Utah tends to be maybe a little bit more conservative than other areas of the country in terms of what’s asked for,” he said.
For searches about facial surgeries, which are most popular in California, Utah’s ranks vary. For the search term “nose job,” Utah ranks third; for “face lift,” Utah ranks 14th; and for “neck lift,” Utah ranks 28th.
Patel was the chief of facial surgery at the University of Utah before he opened his private practice and is well-known for two procedures he designed: the hammock lift — which rejuvenates the top two-thirds of a face — and the Patel deep plane facelift — which utilizes soft tissue in the skin to prevent neck sagging.
“Most of my work these days is head and neck reconstructive and cosmetic surgery,” Patel said. “I do a lot of face and brow lifts, blephs, tumors and cancers, and broken bones and all that sort of stuff.”
He’s currently working on a book featuring 100 essays from his male and female patients. All the testimonials answer one question: Why did the individual decide to do a facelift?
“The reasons can be everything,” Patel said. “Men will say: ‘I started this company. I’m the boss. People keep on telling me, I look tired. When am I going to retire?’”
And, for women, “It’ll be a life change, either they get a divorce or a death in the family. … When ladies get in their late 40s, 50s, many women will say, ‘I became invisible,’ Patel said, “This is a phrase that I’ve heard again and again.”
Throughout his career, Patel has seen many changes in the industry.
Because of social media, he said, people are more aware of the variety of plastic surgery procedures out there, and his facelift practice has “grown enormously.” He’s also seen exponential growth in nonsurgical procedures like Botox since he first started.
Cost also plays into it. “We’re a lot cheaper than New York and LA, they charge literally eight, nine, [even] 10 times what we charge,” Patel said.
Another change: the audience for surgeries.
“[There] used to be a time when cosmetic surgery was sort of for the upper classes, people in the higher financial brackets,” Patel said. “In the last 10 years, I’ve started seeing just ordinary people, who work ordinary jobs, housewives, secretaries.”
Utahns do care deeply about the quality of their plastic surgeons, though. In general, Utah tended to rank very highly for various searches looking for reviews of surgeries, and the state ranked No. 1 for the term “best plastic surgeons.”
Rose specializes in breast and body contouring. When he moved to Utah in 2004, he remembers people questioning his decision to come to the Beehive State, wondering who would be getting plastic surgery there.
Now, the self-described “King of Cleavage” has had patients visit all the way from China.
“People come from all over because they just know that a lot of plastic surgery is done here,” Rose said. “They want to go somewhere where people are really experienced.”
So, yes, Utah is a hot spot for plastic surgery — and a growing one. Through the state’s confluence of social media and reality TV, quality doctors at a reasonable price, and even a bit of unique religious influence, there’s no doubt: Utahns’ minds are changing on the business of changing bodies.
This story was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.