When it comes to spending money to look good, women have got men beat, hands down. In 2014, of the 1.3 million cosmetic procedures—and the $12.9 billion Americans spent on them—women accounted for 90 percent. But things are changing: the number of cosmetic procedures (which include both surgical and non-surgical) men had is up 273 percent since 1997. As soon as someone develops a safe, legitimate penis enlargement procedure (not the kind that flood your spam filters), we expect that figure to quadruple every year for the next, well, forever,
So what kinds of procedures are men getting? Let’s take a look at the most popular ones first. But the real interesting stuff is the lesser-know-but-becoming-more-common ones.
- Gynecomastia (removing what are often known as man boobs or moobs)
- Eyelid (making both the upper and lower eyelids less droopy. This does not remove those dark circles under the eyes).
- Facelifts
- Liposuction (removing fat, usually from the chest and belly)
- Nose reshaping
Men’s top five non-surgical procedures are:
- Botox (to reduce wrinkles on the forehead and face)
- Chemical peel (a process that removes the top layer of skin to expose the smoother layer underneath)
- Laser hair removal (from chest, underarms, etc.)
- Microdermabrasion (similar to chemical peel except that the top layer of skin is essentially buffed off)
- Soft tissue fillers (injecting collagen, fat, or other substances into the skin to reduce wrinkles or add fullness to the lips)
Among surgical procedures, gynecomastia is the only of the top five that’s growing–up 14 percent from 2013 and 29 percent from 2010. However, more and more men are opting for pec implants and abdominal “sculpting” (to give you that bodybuilder chest and six-pack abs without having to bother going to the gym), cheek and chin implants, and buttock lifts and augmentations (to give you the large, perky butt you’ve always dreamed of. Wait, what? Really?)
All of the top non-surgical procedures except for microdermabrasion have grown since last year. Laser skin resurfacing seems to be replacing it.
I used to spend a lot of time wondering why women would spend so much time and money to make themselves look different. My oldest daughter has beautifully curly hair, which she used to spend endless hours straightening. Her sister has wonderful-looking straight hair which she used to spend endless hours curling. Fortunately, my youngest daughter is perfectly happy with her curls.
Men may not be spending as much time or money as women do on modifying our body, but we’re going to increasingly bizarre lengths to look good, whether for possible romantic partners, adoring fans, the media, the board of directors, or possibly just for the mirror at home. Here are just a few of the cosmetic procedures men are getting.
- Bicep implants (if you’ve done your chest, butt, and abs, you can’t very well have skinny arms)
- Chest hair surgery (take hair from the head and implant it on the chest)
- Moustache surgery (same basic idea as above. Hey, not everyone can grow one.)
- Voice-deepening surgery (injecting fat into the vocal cords to make you sound like Barry White)
- Scrotal ironing and reduction (your sac too wrinkled? Too saggy? We can fix that)
- Otoplasty (to make the ears stick out less or just move them to a more pleasing location)
- Necklift (to reduce sagging)
And just so you know, women are going to some extremes as well. Between 2013 and 2014, labiaplasty procedures increased by 49 percent (since the suffix “plasty” means “to reshape,” we’re sure you can figure out what labiaplasty is all about).