TEENAGE PLASTIC SURGERY
People Magazine
–BY THILAN PHAM
People Magazine
April 5, 2010
Jon Escalante HAD SURGERY AT 17 HE HID HIS DUMBO EARS BEHIND HIS HAIR AND THEN LEARNED HE’D HAVE TO CUT IT TO PURSUE HIS DREAM CAREER. In elementary school Jon Escalante was uncomfortable hanging out in the hallways when kids called out, “What’s up, Dumbo?” he says. “I’d just turn away because I didn’t want to get in a fight.” Then in sixth grade, Escalante came up with another way to avoid trouble: He grew out his hair until it was curly and puffy,” he says, and would have kept it that way forever if he didn’t want to join a fire-service youth program, for which short hair was a prerequisite. “I was like, ‘I can’t cut my hair,'” recalls the Sun Valley, Calif., native who realized the way he felt about his ears was having a detrimental effect on his life. With the support of his mother, Escalante began looking into surgery, and in August 2008 he underwent an otoplasty with Beverly Hills surgeon Gabriel Chiu. Now 19 and a student at Los Angeles Valley College, where he is pursuing a fire-science degree, Escalante says, “I waited all my life to get surgery, and now I don’t care if people see my ears!”
