Lucia

de Vernai

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July 29, 2009

Men Embracing Plastic Surgery? Might As Well Come to Terms With It

Plastic surgery has not lost popularity among Americans during the recession. Once associated with cougars (women over 45 preying on young men) stalking college-town bars and Hollywood starlets with confusing body proportions, it is now more mainstream than ever, in part thanks to men.

If the thought of your co-worker or brother-in-law with glossy, silicone-enhanced lips pops into mind, you can relax. The procedures most popular among American men include Botox, eyelid surgery and hair transplants that have gained popularity among suburban dads and guys trying to turn the clock back on 30 years of stress at the office.

Men going under the knife seems like natural progress for a country whose male population spends $3.5 billion on male grooming products (in addition to stealing our lotion and hair conditioner). But how much appearance anxiety are we willing to embrace in our men? Procedures that would once gather ridicule from colleagues or in the locker room are now accessible and affordable enough to garner no special attention.

Vain as we are, Americans are not the only ones taking plastic surgery into serious consideration. In some places around the world, nearly a quarter of the male population has admitted that they are giving thought to cosmetic plastic surgery, mainly because they think a better appearance will help them in the job search. Apparently there are a lot more people than we thought out there who think they are not pretty enough to be accountants.

Even as men and women undergo the same procedures, their perceived motivation seems to hold old-stereotypes: Men do it for themselves, we do it for men. As cosmetic plastic surgery becomes more and more popular among men, some hope that obsession with the ideal image emerges as part of human nature, dispelling the long-held belief that it is gender-specific, reserved for insecure, approval-needy women.

As more men get laser hair removal, smoother foreheads, or hell, even pectoral implants, let’s make a note that it’s not because that’s how the guys in adult films look and if they don’t match, no women will ever desire them. Perhaps what the male cosmetic surgery trend can teach women is that there is no shame in getting a procedure done if it’s genuinely done for you.

If plastic surgery could be about personal gratification, not a matter of gender, maybe we could put an end to the discussion of how much alteration is too much and no longer just aesthetic but intrusive to the sovereignty of women’s bodies. Given the increased popularity of breast reductions, calf implants and nose jobs among men, the subject of body-altering medical procedures is no longer a “women’s issue” – if we let it.

I’m not sure how I feel about hearing a middle-aged man in a mini-van answer “are they real?” with “yeah, real big, real fake and real expensive,” but as long as they stay out of the college-town bars, I think we’ll get along.

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