As you may have noticed, we had some work done this year — totally new site, totally new us. We were far from the only ones in our orbit, though, to get a little nip-and-tuck over the last 12 months. Here then is a top-to-bottom, head-to-dick overview of all the ways men went under the knife in 2018 — or at least all the ways men went under the knife that we covered…
Face
“Men Have Finally Realized Good Eyebrows Are Crucial — So They’re Implanting Them Onto Their Face.” While hair transplants on the scalp are nothing new, features writer C. Brian Smith talked to men who had hair transplants on their eyebrows to fill in the missing and/or thin follicles over their eyes. The reason? The typical insecurities around not being masculine enough — at least per Smith’s reporting and a 52-year-old Floridian named Johnny that he interviewed: “Whenever [Johnny] meets someone, the first and second things he notices are their eyes and their eyebrows. That’s why his ‘feminine, unpronounced’ pair always leave him feeling naked and exposed.”
Where, though, does this transplanted hair come from? Surprise! It’s usually the pubes. “Pubic hair can definitely be used in an eyebrow transplant,” Dr. Sanusi Umar, a hair restoration surgeon and the man who performed the world’s first eyebrow transplant using body hair as opposed to scalp hair, told Smith. “It’s especially suitable for individuals whose natural eyebrow hair is curly and coarse.”
It figures that it takes a nice bush to make bushy eyebrows.
Chest
“The Men Lining Up for Breast Reduction Surgery.” Between 2016 and 2017, breast reduction in men actually declined 3 percent. Still, for men experiencing gynecomastia, or the more familiar taunt of “bitch tits” or “man boobs,” breast reduction is a highly desirable solution to an emotionally (and sometimes physically) painful problem. “One such grateful patient — 47-year-old Jacob —had breast reduction surgery in 2015 and tells me it’s hard to convey the psychological relief it’s brought him,” wrote Smith, once again back on the cosmetic surgery beat. “‘I looked like a woman,’ [Jacob] explains. ‘There are a lot of times a man is expected to take off his shirt, and I obsessively avoided those times.’ You can hide your stomach, ass or size of your penis, [Jacob] notes. But your chest is right next to your face, so people will always see it.”
Legs
“Men Are Spending $200K and Enduring the Worst Pain Imaginable to Grow Three Inches.” Although we’re currently ruled by Short Kings, a shocking number of men are still choosing to undergo a procedure that involves having their femurs shattered and a nail-like implant placed between the broken pieces, in the marrow cavity. A few days after the procedure, the actual lengthening occurs.
“The patient is given a magnetic device that communicates with tiny gears inside the Precise Nail that slowly lengthens the rod, averaging one inch per month,” wrote Smith (noticing a trend here?). “As such, after three months, there’s typically an increase of three inches. It takes an additional month or two for the new bone to calcify enough to bear weight. It’s actually fairly discrete, as cosmetic surgeries go, since the Precise Nail is entirely internal. To justify the days in a wheelchair and weeks on crutches to curious coworkers, most patients lie and explain they ‘had to get some work done’ on their knee.”
The cost for these three extra inches and months’ worth of agony? Three hundred grand — unless you go to Syria, where you can get leg lengthening for as cheap as 15 grand.
“Are Calf Implants the Male Equivalent of a Boob Job?” A less extreme procedure is calf augmentation — if just barely. “Pain is significant after surgery, [Canadian plastic surgeon Marc] DuPere admits, because of the amount of cutting to the muscle,” Smith reported. “He recommends crutches for seven to fourteen days for pain management and says that most people take at least a week off of work. ‘If they have a lot of walking to do,’ DuPere warns, ‘they won’t be able to do it easily.’ They’ll also be unable to drive for a couple of weeks since their calf muscles help depress the pedals. Astrix81, a 37-year-old DuPere patient who had four calf implants inserted in 2016, can attest to the post-op discomfort. ‘This surgery is painful,’ he cautions the RealSelf messageboard. ‘I walked into the surgery not fully comprehending its full intensity. This is a surgery for the die hard. You must really have crap calves and REALLY want to improve them.’”
Dicks
“This Is What It Looks Like When a Guy Gets a ‘Dick Job.’” We can say with certainty that it’s not pretty. In fact, when Smith witnessed Beverly Hills urologist James J. Elist perform the procedure, he described Elist as pulling the patient’s penis “out of his body like an inside-out gym sock.” From there, Elist “wraps [the silicon prosthetic] and a layer of surgical mesh around the exposed penis. Then, with a fish-hook-shaped needle and 8 to 10 sutures, he attaches it just beneath the head of the penis. (The implant sits 270 degrees around the shaft, leaving room for the urethra.) Every so often, Elist thrusts the whole thing in and out of the body — back and forth, like a playful otter — making sure it all hangs just right.”
But with such pain comes great gain:
“Next, some final measurements: The length had been three inches.
‘Now,’ Elist says proudly, extending [a measuring] tape. ‘Five-and-a-half inches.’
Instant thickness has been added to the girth, too.
It’s a totally different dick.
‘I tell patients, ‘Your penis is now longer and thicker from whatever you remember. The size of your underwear will need to be bigger. Everything is going to change.’”
“I Give Men the Scrotums They’ve Always Wanted.” Speaking of things that aren’t pretty. The scrotum has long been held in low regard in terms of aesthetic. That’s where Dr. Gary Alter, a pioneer in scrotoplasty comes in: “I’m sure men are nervous about the procedure when they come to see me, but they’re usually happy that they’ve found someone who can help with their complaints. Most of them have gone to a urologist who says, ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ or “You’re crazy.’ But not me. That was my whole vision when I went into plastic surgery: To fix the problems that make men self-conscious, but are ignored by the medical community.”
All of the Above
“This ‘Human Ken Doll’ Does It For The Art.” Finally, the tale of Justin Jedlica, aka the “Human Ken Doll,” who has made plastic surgery both his life and his brand. He earns cash from all the things he’s had surgically altered on his body (from his nose, to his biceps and triceps, to everything in between — and below) via the tabloid obsession with his plastic, Ken-doll looks and by advising others on how they might do the same, even helping them design custom silicon implants. He’s become such a pro that he now eschews general anesthesia when going under the knife. “The hard part is you feel the tugging and smell the burning flesh when it’s cauterizing,” he told us in April. “But you can tolerate it as long as you’re mentally prepared.”
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
