Girlymen, Unite!
Plastic surgery... Not just for ladies anymore
Results of a new survey on the demand for plastic surgery read like a Fodor's guide to the fountain of youth. "Botox is popular in the fall," we learn, and "the latest trends" include mothers and daughters going under the knife together. The most significant development—and the most hyped—is the upsurge in male demand. The manly ideal of indifference to matters of appearance has given way to the urgent desire for a nip here and a tuck there.
The study undertaken by the American Academy of Facial and Plastic Reconstructive Surgeons seems to support a couple of declinist theories about the state of the American character. Conservatives lament lost masculinity, the Timberlake-ification of American men. Our James Deans and Cary Grants have been repressed and replaced by the hopelessly delicate Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. And the confusion of these lost stallions supposedly results in the scary trend of boys being "left behind" in feminized elementary schools and doomed to release their pent up aggression Columbine style. To confuse them even further, now, their fathers are coming home with face-lifts and lip augmentations.
I've got my suspicions about the boys-in-crisis hype, the suggestion that all the attention lavished on female achievement has turned adolescent boys into bastions of repressed carnal longing. It would seem that alarmists, faced with stories of successful women, suddenly had to look elsewhere to find degeneration. How else to put a negative spin on the fact that universities that didn't accept women 30 years ago are now 60 percent female?
Though the focus on females isn't responsible for male underachievement, the recent spate of Botox-happy men does have something to do with successful women. In the jungle of American dating, males need more than a solid salary to attract a mate. The promise of security won't attract women who can obtain that on their own. When six-figures are no longer impressive, smooth skin and tight buttocks are at a premium. And those, thanks to the artistry of willing surgeons everywhere, can be bought.
American men have always been encouraged to forge their own realities in the fertile land of upward mobility and ready capital. Young men were encouraged to "go West" and make good, while women were more likely to direct their creative energies inward, fulfilling the American Dream with the help of Chanel and Lancome rather than joint stock companies or raw ambition. Today women have proved capable of mastering both worlds. The image of the bombshell businesswoman is that of success on both fronts, control on both sides of the divide. The new data on plastic surgery indicates that men have started to realize that their bodies are no more rigid than social class, and that they too can craft reality on both fronts.
Plastic surgery, of course, lacks the social acceptability of more traditional forms of self-improvement. Weight loss is admirable, rhinoplasty is "inauthentic." Slim Fast—good. Botox—bad. The most powerful argument against carving your way to a better body is that such behavior supports normative standards of beauty. This argument doesn't really differentiate between surgery and other forms of beautification—shaving and nail-clipping also support socially acceptable norms. And placing the blame for repugnant norms on the technology that enables them is like placing the blame for bad writing directly on Gutenberg. If the norms are problematic, plastic surgery at least allows some people to escape the humiliation that results from static ideas of perfection.
While some men will undoubtedly pursue Ken-like ideals (and Ken himself has been sprucing up lately) the tattoo-covered, tongue-splitting set is there to prove that changing the body and resisting uniformity are not mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, people will continue to value "natural" beauty (just ask Calista Flockhart) and distinguishing quirks.
Men and women alike should embrace the idea that their bodies are theirs to love as they are or to mold as they will. Contentment or collagen, au naturel or otoplasty, a little choice is a welcome development.