RealSelf.com is a health and beauty community for patients to engage in conversation about personal beauty, skin care, and wellness. Their title tag line is “answers, tips, and treatment reviews for skin care, cosmetic plastic surgery, spa services, and anti-aging.” Their goal is to provide a safe place to get the opinion of peers and professionals about what products, treatments or procedures are worth it.
Of course they have a commitment to keeping it real. On their website it states, “the prime reason we chose our company name is that we believe consumers want realistic opinions and real answers when it comes to investing in their self. At RealSelf.com we stay ‘real’ by not accepting paid placements, fake reviews, or commercial considerations that compromise the integrity of community generated reviews, ratings and postings.”
The inspiration behind RealSelf comes from the fact that founder Tom Seery was told by his wife that their are 150,000 reviews about hotel towels but none about laser skin treatments.
There are three main points to the website. RealSelf reviews offers user reviews which is equipped with a spam algorithm, which will hunt and kill smam reviews. RealSelf answers is a community network where health professionals answer questions put in by users. Finally, the RealSelf index ranks treatments by “was it worth it” ratings.
All in all RealSelf looks like a good community to learn about honest answers to cosmetic procedures. There are numerous active professionals and doctors who give valuable information. However they seem to be cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists.
I personally feel that cosmetic procedures often are not worth it because their are always risks involved. Besides, it is only cosmetic and is not like you are in pain or have loss of functioning. However, if you are considering a cosmetic procedure you should check out RealSelf.