Lights! Camera! Suction! How A Plastic Surgeon Became A Snapchat Sensation

Dr. Michael Salzhauer, 44, sits at a chunky wooden dining table in his cavernous Mediterranean home north of Miami Beach. We’re surrounded by “barters,” as he calls them: curtains, furniture, jewelry traded for nips and tucks. “My wife needed a bookcase, and the decorator said, ‘I know this great guy who makes bookcases.’ So we traded: He built that,” he says, gesturing at the built-ins spanning one of the great room’s walls, “and I'm doing his wife’s tummy tuck in a week.”

On this evening in late March, we eat lasagna on dairy-only placemats atop a meat-only tablecloth an arm’s length from his kosher kitchen. His five kids have been shuffled to the other side of the house, shooting hoops on their indoor court emblazoned with a Miami Heat logo or playing on their phones. The youngest has spelling homework due tomorrow, and is begging his mother, Eva, Salzhauer's wife of 21 years, not to make him study (“The teacher never checks — there’s no point!”). After dinner, Michael will head to evening temple services to pray for his father on the 16th anniversary of his death.

An Orthodox Jewish, Floridian dad may seem like the unlikeliest star of a platform targeted to teenagers. But early tomorrow morning, under the too-bright Florida sun, Salzhauer will drive through his tony neighborhood to a nondescript office building, pull out his phone, and become Dr. Miami, one of the biggest stars on Snapchat. He’ll snap butt lifts and boob jobs and lipo to over a million followers, sparing no gory shot, while Future and Fetty blare in the background.

therealdrmiami / Snapchat

Here’s how it works: Dr. Miami operates on patients — 90 to 95% are female — willing to have their surgery broadcast; 2 out of 3 agree to go on camera and, no, they don’t get a discount. The doctor explains each slice, suck, and suture as he goes, while a social media assistant documents it on a cell phone. The grisly videos and photos are posted to Dr. Miami’s Snapchat Story (@therealdrmiami), which users can view for 24 hours. In between surgeries, he posts spontaneous clips of life at the office, and he ends each day with shout-outs to viewers who message him.

“He likes to be the showman,” Eva tells me, carrying an unsolicited bowl of cut fruit to the table. “The only thing that's new for me is that so many more people are noticing.”

Since he started snapping a year ago, Dr. Miami’s audience has exploded at a bacterial pace. At first a single post attracted 2,000 viewers; just a few weeks later, 30,000. The Wednesday I arrive in Miami, he’s averaging 800,000 views per snap. By the time I land back in New York, he breaks 1.2 million views on one called “Sunday Fun-Bags-Day,” and has since hit 1.7 million on a single post. His viewership peaks at the week's start and drops by around 100,000 as the week goes on; he thinks it’s because he's offline for the Sabbath every Saturday, so fans are hungry for his posts by Sunday.

He was nominated for Snapchatter of the Year alongside Kylie Jenner and fellow Miamian DJ Khaled. Director Marc Klasfeld, whose video for Wiz Khalifa’s "See You Again" recently broke a billion views on YouTube, asked him to collaborate on a project. Tabloids like Us Weekly and Bossip covered him for Twitter feuding with Nicki Minaj and doing “mommy makeovers” for Teen Moms and Bad Girls of the titular club. Fans come from all over the country to take selfies with him, including a superfan who drove 18 hours from Alabama the week I visited. (Technically, her family drove; she wasn’t yet 16.) He receives near-constant media requests and pitches for reality shows, one of which is being produced to air later this year. In the meantime, he's hosting a Facebook Live talk show called Naked Tea, in which he and his staff talk celebrity news and interview local guests, like Real Housewives of Miami's Lea Black.

It’s the kind of attention he’s been chasing for years. He was voted class clown in his medical school yearbook. He put his face on bus stop ads. “When he first became a plastic surgeon,” Eva says, “he was the only plastic surgeon that hired skywriters.”

Then a tireless string of gags called out as gaffes, including a 2008 children’s book about plastic surgery called My Beautiful Mommy; 2009’s surgery simulation app iSurgeon; 2010’s Heidi Montag–inspired game Heidi Yourself ("If we had known about it, we would've def sued that idiot," Montag’s husband, Spencer Pratt, told me); and a 2012 music video called “Jewcan Sam (A Nose Job Love Song)," which was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and prompted an investigation by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

But transitioning from Dr. Salzhauer to Dr. Miami has done wonders for his career. Dr. Salzhauer did good work but got some bad press; Dr. Miami is a role model, with patients so eager to see him he's booked for the next two years. “He's not a crazy person,” Eva says. “He's a real person with a real profession. It's nice that people are looking up to someone other than some drug addict.”

Plus, he insists, he’s fighting the stigma surrounding plastic surgery while getting kids into medicine. “I think it's really tyrannical to tell other people that it is wrong for them to want to look a certain way or do a certain thing,” he tells me, picking watermelon slices out of the bowl with his fingers. “That's their choice. Especially since they do look better.”

“Better?” Eva scoffs. “Some people look like different human beings.”

The Dr. Miami suture training kit.

Jared Harrell / BuzzFeed News

He Skypes into medical school classes, answers viewers' questions, and sells suture kits to teenage fans who want to stay in school and become surgeons because of him. “I think about Michael Phelps and I think rising, rising, rising, and then...” He makes a fist and pops it open, making a noise like a bomb going off. “People like to build up their heroes and then crash them down.”

His son, David, 11, interjects: “It's gonna last for a long time, though.”

“You think so?” Eva asks.

“People who are famous are famous for at least 10 years,” David says, and pauses. “I think I'm gonna take over. But I'm not gonna be the same. I'm gonna do something else that's gonna make me famous. If you're a Salzhauer, you can do anything to make you be famous.” He reaches over toward his dad for a fist pound.

“All right,” Salzhauer laughs. “That's the first I've heard that one.”

“You can make yourself famous for anything,” David says, chewing on a noodle like it’s bubble gum.

Eva sighs. “Let's not become infamous, though.”

Dr. Miami in his Bay Harbor Islands, Florida office.

Josh Ritchie for BuzzFeed News

“So, how are you with blood?”

It’s one of first things the doctor asks me when I arrive at his clinic on Wednesday afternoon. He has a chiseled jaw and an artificially chiseled nose and makes intense eye contact always, breaking only to assess whether I’m wearing appropriate shoes.

He is wiry and kinetic, speaking screwball-fast and always on his toes, wearing black scrubs featuring a neon “Dr. Miami” in the Miami Vice font. The logo is everywhere: in the elevator bay, on the walls, on his employees’ shirts (which fans may buy through his online store — called alternately the Booty Q or the We the Breast Store, a play on DJ Khaled’s We the Best Store).

“OK,” he tells one of the receptionists, clapping his hands together like a kids soccer coach. “I’m going to bring her down to surgery.” He skips the elevator and instead sprints down the outdoor stairwell overlooking the parking lot.

The Bal Harbour Plastic Surgery office, all clean gray stone and jewel-toned Home Goods accessories, takes up three floors of the Kane Concourse building on the island of Bay Harbor. It’s in a ritzy area, 30 minutes north of South Beach, home to Israeli-born Miami Heat owner Micky Arison and a synagogue undergoing a $20 million expansion. While they wait for their consultations, Dr. Miami’s clients are encouraged to pop into the nearby luxury mall or sun by the beachside Ritz Carlton.

“Today’s patient is getting an unusual procedure for Miami: an implant reduction. Her husband wants them to be smaller,” he says as we walk and talk through the OR prep room while a Barbie-incarnate nurse hands me a smock, hairnet, and booties. “I don’t know if she’s embarrassed or what, but she came in saying she was unhappy.” He sighs. “Sometimes I’m a psychotherapist with a knife.”

The social media assistant on duty is Ashley Belance, a 21-year-old Florida native who started working for Dr. Miami about a year ago. At the time, she was working overnight shifts at a South Beach Marriott, while taking online classes and raising her 3-year-old son. One restless morning after work, she was lying in bed and saw the job posting on his Instagram. “I took a screenshot of it and I sent it to my friend and said, ‘I’m going to work for this man.’” She was the first social media assistant Dr. Miami hired, followed by Brittany Benson, 27, a college athlete turned HR specialist turned model. They film the procedures, but are also characters on the “show,” as they call it.

Once Ashley enters the OR, she opens HotNewHipHop on a desktop while the doctor and an all-male surgery team assess the anesthetized woman lying on the table. He takes two steps toward a monitor displaying her name and “before” photo, and asks Ashley to cover the name with medical tape. She does, then shoots the doctor explaining what procedure he’ll be doing today.

“You know, kids, what I always say is, ‘If you can change a tire, you can change an implant,'” he says as he prepares to slice around the nipple, sounding like the biology teacher on an alternate-universe Disney sitcom. “I take my 15 blade, go across the previous incision here. I cut the breast tissue carefully into the implant pocket, take the old implant out, and put the new implant in.” Ashley leans directly over the table, positioning herself to get every visceral detail. The smell of burning flesh hangs in the air. There’s some disagreement about songs, what they have or haven’t played recently, what viewer song requests still need to be fulfilled.

therealdrmiami / Snapchat

Ashley doesn’t film everything — these procedures can take anywhere from 30 minutes to six hours. It’s more like a cooking show, where Martha Stewart stuffs the chicken, says it has to bake for two hours, and magically pulls a completed one out of her oven. Dr. Miami and his team work with Olympic precision but banter like any other officemates: Ashley wants a new car, and the guys rib her for her current one, a Hyundai. They joke about driving a stolen one up from Mexico.

It’s been a few minutes since they last posted, so Dr. Miami requests some screen time. “I stand corrected,” he says, speaking faster than Mavis Beacon types to meet Snapchat’s 10-second time frame. “It's not easier than changing a tire at a NASCAR pit stop. It's faster than changing a tire on the road like an average person. I apologize to any NASCAR fans who said, 'Hey, it takes seven seconds.’” He searches his name on Twitter for reactions, and checks how many screenshots his Snapchat viewers have taken (1,000-plus signals success). Often, the more childish the image, the better: A recent hit was someone’s stomach, mid–tummy tuck, gaping open like a smiley face with two eyes Sharpied on, with the caption “Don’t worry, be happy.”

For the final shot, the doctor grabs the phone from Ashley. He points it at the “before” picture shown on the monitor, then at the “after” lying on the operating table. “So we're all done. Implants are changed. See?” he says, poking at the right breast. “It's like we were never there.”

Dr. Miami is briefed by Tati Pinzon and works in the OR with Brittany Benson.

therealdrmiami / Snapchat

“In the beginning, my daughter was amused,” he tells me post-surgery, as we settle into his private office. “She’s the one who first told me about Snapchat.” His office is cluttered with stuff: medical books; a soft box to light his videos and Skype consultations; a clear plastic bag holding tefillin for his morning prayers; clippings of his appearances in tabloid magazines; a fake People magazine cover featuring him and his wife (“Famous Couples: Their Secrets Revealed”); and a prototype for a failed crowdfunding project, a doll with interchangeable boobs and butts.

A little over a year ago, he’d attracted around 90,000 Instagram followers posting before-and-after photos of his handiwork. But the platform is notoriously sensitive to nudity, and deleted his account after one risqué photo too many. That’s when his then-15-year-old daughter suggested he try Snapchat. “She goes, ‘Dad, 1,800 people watched it — that's a lot of people for a Snapchat. I usually get three.’”

With the help of his sister-in-law turned practice manager, Rosy Zion, and one of his young employees, Tati Pinzon, he kept pace. A few weeks later, his following was in the tens of thousands. From the start, his Snapchat fans weren’t just talking about the quality of his surgeries, but that he was the dude who goofed around listening to hip-hop during them. After a viewer first requested he play “Trap Queen” during a procedure, Fetty Wap became a foil for the doctor: Dr. Miami sent his fans on a faux mission to get a 43rd birthday shout-out from the rapper; on Fetty’s birthday, the doctor posted a "tribute” video to YouTube in which he played a piano cover of “Trap Queen” à la Ben Folds. The gimmick earned him fans, especially among teenagers. He recently added a “Trap King” shirt to his online store.

It didn’t stop with Fetty. He refers to himself as the Jay Z of his own little empire — he sometimes uses the rap name Hndrd — which as of late includes SurgRecordz, a record label seeking new artists to play during his surgeries and give exposure. He’s friendly with black reality celebs (he recently redid someone’s butt on an episode of Black Ink Crew). A recurring narrative on his channel involved his hunt for a pair of Yeezy Boost sneakers, which he ultimately received in exchange for a half-price butt lift. He throws up deuces with sliced-open bodies and told Complex he likes to operate to Lil B and “Bitch Better Have My Money.”