"I've always been in the adult business," says Helen Elliott, who calls herself "aesthetic consultant" to the adult stars. "I always represented someone who worked in the adult industry… I do more volume with the adult industry because they need it, whether they're adult or mainstream. When you're in Playboy and are naked, or in a movie and have to be naked, you have to look good. And they want to look good."
Elliott, essentially, puts adult entertainment professionals into contact with the top plastic or cosmetic surgeons in southern California. And she says she's making it easier all the time for those who need or want it to get there by going online. The tastefully arrayed site (www.helenelliott.com) is an instant eye catcher, with its simple gold and black graphics on white and an oval-framed photograph of the striking-looking Elliott, but she admitted she has more work to do on it.
"I want people to know who I am," she told AVN On the Net, "but I have so much more information to put in it. I want men and women in the industry to know there's someone who can help them and bring them to the top guys, I'm the personal touch.
"I work with the big companies, like Metro, and Leisure Time, and Extreme, and Vivid," she continued, "but you know, if more people know that a Helen Elliott is there for them, and they can call me toll free or pull up my Web site, they can have someone guide them in to the right doctor, the top surgeon. Who wouldn't want to be connected? Now they can say, 'Wow, I can see the top guy and get a preferred rate and have someone take care of me.'"
Elliott has done this kind of consulting for almost twenty years. "I do all the product relations, all the marketing and sales, for the plastic surgery," she said. "I'm kind of what you could call a glorified concierge. I can book (a patient) into the best hotels, make sure their needs are met and basically hold their hand."
And aside from her living, she does it almost entirely for love. "It's a business and we have to make money," she said of both adult entertainment and plastic or cosmetic surgery. "But isn't our emotional self better when we look good and feel good? We're the ones who have to look in the mirror each day."
Elliott said plastic or cosmetic surgery is not strictly for women anymore, although women are still the whopping majority of plastic surgery patients - even if they're doing it at a far younger age now than a decade ago. "Fifteen percent men, 85 percent women," she said. "In the new millennium, you're going to find more men aware of themselves. It's becoming more ok for men to say, 'Gee, I want a little improvement here and there.'"
So, how many in the adult entertainment industry have undergone one or another kind of plastic or cosmetic surgery? Elliott was careful not to drop any names or give in to the typical tabloid temptation to exaggerate or to sneer, especially involving a medical practice for which she has genuine and deep respect. "I would say," she said finally, "I'm thinking that, perhaps to be ever so fair, at least 50-60 percent.
"And there's nothing wrong with it at all. Not if it makes you feel better about you."
