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And as the cultural taboo against plastic surgery has lifted, a man is more likely to say “yes” when a woman suggests it. After all, wives often do all the advance work — shopping around and interviewing surgeons — so it’s relatively easy for husbands to sign the papers when all the research is set before them. “Men are figuring out what women figured out decades ago, which is that like it or not, our appearance really matters. We see it not only in men’s pursuit of cosmetic surgery but also in the growing number of health magazines and skin-care lines directed at men,” said psychologist David Sarwer, lead editor of the new book Psychological Aspects of Reconstructive and Cosmetic Plastic Surgery. For men, such surgical togetherness is part of a larger trend. The number of cosmetic procedures performed on men increased 16% from 2000 to 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (The number of cosmetic procedures performed on women is up 42% since 2000.) Though the organization doesn’t keep statistics on which patients share the same household, its members performed 10.2 million cosmetic procedures in 2005, up 11% from 2004, with men having 1,196,392 of those procedures. Many of those patients were husbands and wives, or boyfriends and girlfriends, said Dr. Darrick Antell, a spokesman for the organization. He cites a 15% increase in couples in the last two years at his New York practice, and other doctors report a similar uptick. “Perhaps it’s due to all the makeover shows on TV, but men are paying a lot more attention to their bodies and realizing that having plastic surgery doesn’t mean they’re wimps,” said Diane Gerber, a Chicago-based plastic surgeon. Most of the couples surgeries she performs at her practice are instigated by the wife. “The usual pattern is, I’ll do face or body work on her, and then subsequently she’ll mention something like, ‘My husband’s eyelids are drooping,’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, bring him in.’ Often the man doesn’t even know something can be done about the lids, and that it’s not that big a recovery.” |
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