Sept. 15--BEIRUT -- Growing up, Elie was never happy with his big nose, but at the time, most of the people he knew who were getting nose jobs were women. But by the time he was 19, he didn't think twice about getting the operation.
"I thought, why not? Everyone in Lebanon does it. If you're not comfortable with yourself, then you won't be comfortable with others ... Before, it was considered a shame. Now it's normal," said Elie, who nonetheless does not want his real name revealed.
Over the past several years, the rate of cosmetic surgery for men has jumped significantly. Plastic surgeon Roger el-Khoury, founder of Beirut Beauty Clinic in the Beirut suburb of Zalka, says that five years ago 5 percent of his patients were men. Today, they account for 20 percent.
Bahaa Arbid, at St. George Hospital in Beirut, who has been practicing for the past year and a half, says in medical school he was told the rate of male patients was around 10 percent, but that his recent experience has shown the figure to be closer to 25 percent.
"Lots of men are encouraged by their girlfriends who make them feel more comfortable about having surgery," Arbid said.
Other plastic surgeons in Lebanon report similar rates of increase in male patients, reflecting a worldwide trend of men being increasingly willing to go under the knife to look younger and more handsome -- with the biggest proportion of demand coming from middle-aged men.
"Plastic surgery is now linked to wellness. Men also want to feel good, so they ask about cosmetic surgery," says Khoury.
He says that with medication helping men feel younger inside, they now want to look better outside too.
"Men now get treatment for their sexual dysfunctions. With tablets they feel young, so they want to look young."
Some of the most common treatments sought by men are hair transplants, Botox and facelifts, and it is also not uncommon for men to request liposuction, nose jobs and even body sculpting to make their muscles appear more defined.
A technique called Vaser High Def, introduced to the Middle East two years ago and available in the United States for the past 10 years, gives patients the appearance of a six-pack flat stomach that would normally result from rigorous exercise and body-building.
Plastic surgeon Firas Hamdan, based in the Beirut suburbs of Clemenceau, spent nine years practicing in the United States, where he studied the Vaser High Def technique. When he returned to Lebanon six years ago, he found that many of his patients were not overweight, but instead were young men in good physical shape who wanted to increase the definition in their abdominal muscles.
"We have nightlife and beaches, and people usually [get the surgery] in the early spring to look good for summer," says Hamdan.
In addition to an improvement in techniques, Hamdan says he has seen male patients become more accepting of plastic surgery.
"Before, men would come in after hours or on a Saturday afternoon [to maintain discretion]. Now, we see men and women sitting together in the waiting room," he says.
But the spike in men's procedures and a general increase in acceptance aren't necessarily reflected in public. While many women these days speak openly about their breast implants and nose jobs, sometimes even wearing their post-operation nose bandages around town, men go to great lengths to hide their beauty investments.
"What's interesting is that women like to talk about it with their friends, but men don't," Khoury notes. "In the Arab world men would be ridiculed for having plastic surgery, even though the idea is now more accepted than before," he says. "A man's not going to say 'I'm doing Botox.'"
Perhaps hoping to avoid detection, men are more cautious in their choice of procedures, which typically leads to the best results, says Khoury.
"Men are more conservative," he says. "They want natural results. The most successful procedures are for men because they insist on having natural results."
Still, despite the vast increase in men's aesthetic surgeries in recent years, it's unlikely that men's procedures will reach the same rate as women's any time soon.
"Because their bodies go through so much change after childbirth, there will always be more demand from women," says Roland Tomeh from Trad hospital in Beirut. "And it's still considered a feminine thing to do."
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