When you thing of cosmetic breast surgery, it’s natural that your first thoughts are about women. After all, that’s what everyone thinks breast surgery is about – helping women to improve their looks.
However, growing numbers of men are taking the plunge and considering breast reduction surgery, too – according to a recent presentation to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, male breast reduction surgery has increased by 1000% over the past five years. That’s ten times as many men as before.
The information was revealed at the Association’s annual conference in Cardiff last week (September 17). The conference was told that men are losing their inhibitions about surgery and deciding to have an operation that, like almost all cosmetic surgery before, was thought to be for women only.
And men are having the treatments for exactly the same reason that women are – quite simply, more men are now openly concerned about their looks.
And as it’s the same treatment, cost is the same, too – an average of £4,000 per operation.
“It’s embarrassing to take my shirt off,” said one man who has had the surgery. “I want to be able to go to the beach with my children and take my shirt off for a tan, for a swim, for all the things you do on the beach.”
All this suggests that men are coming to the conclusion that any stigma involved with having surgery – the view that “real” men don’t have work like that done, for instance – is being outweighed by the belief that it’s better to have something done than to leave things as they are. In short, there’s nothing wrong in doing what you can to look as good as you can.
As a result of this shift in attitudes, male breast reduction surgery has moved into fifth place on the most popular surgery procedures for men. The facelift has dropped into sixth place, now, behind the most popular procedures of nose reshaping, eyelifts, ear corrections, liposuction and now breast reduction.
