Many of us want to give the impression of elegance, grace, firmness and youth. The shape of our body contributes to the impression we give. As facial cosmetic surgery strives to achieve balance and harmony among the facial features, the same sculpting principles of harmony of shape and symmetry apply to the body. The bust should be well proportioned with the shoulders, hips and waist, the stomach should be flat and the skin smooth and firm, the thighs, hips and ankles should be slim and curvy. Any excess in one direction or another disturbs the general equilibrium of the shape of the body. Body sculpting procedures or breast surgery can go a long way to erase these imbalances.

The art of re-shaping the body begins with the surgeon's eye and his attitude toward the artistic form of the body. While in the past, re-shaping may have consisted of simply removing large pockets of fat in one area, the latest approach involves shaping the body and refining its form, observing the body as a whole. Rather than just removing what the patient considers the problem area, often other small amounts of fat are removed from the abdomen, hips, thighs, and knees all in one surgical procedure to restore the proportion and balance in the body lost through the years. An expert surgeon realizes one area of the body must naturally flow into another to achieve fluency and a sculpted, balanced result.

To actively seek to improve the shape of the body is also a way of becoming more aware, so as to treat it better in the future. It is not unusual for men and women to put themselves on a weight loss regime following body shaping procedures or that they resume working out or practicing a sport in order to continue to further improve their new shape.