From taboo to routine

Khaleej Times on the spread of cosmetic surgery in the Gulf

Cosmetic surgery, once considered taboo in the Middle East, is becoming popular in the region, with a large majority of elite women and men going for it of late.
...
Men usually go for hair restoration surgery, including hair transplantation, restoration of scalp, eyebrow, eye lashes and moustache; liposuction; chin augmentation to look more masculine; lip implant; and tummy tuck.

Women, particularly Arab ladies, go for breast augmentation, breast implants, breast reduction, breast lifting for sagging breasts which is very popular among those with many children, lip implants, liposuction, minor facelift, post-bariatric (obesity) surgery, rhinoplasty or nose lifting, skin rejuvenation and many others
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Dr Nihal Aboushousha, director of marketing and business development of AACSH [American Academy Hospital Cosmetic Surgery in Dubai Healthcare City], said cosmetic surgery is becoming more popular among people in the Middle East than the West.

She explained that the American Academy Hospital Cosmetic Surgery chose to open a branch in Dubai because the statistics showed several Emiratis had been travelling to the US for cosmetic surgery worth billions of dollars.

Kuwait Times 'Kuwait Plast 2008' This year the conference is concentrating on the problem of flaps, which occur after liposuction.

"Obesity spread in the Kuwaiti society, and many people suffer from this disease. Some of them decide to put an end to this problem, so they underwent liposuction, which can cause flaps. Now they don't know what to do with the access (sic) skin, which should be removed with plastic surgery."

The New Republic says,

Cosmetic surgery is commonplace in Iran, where the number of nose jobs performed each year is about the highest in the world. As Azadeh Moaveni notes in Lipstick Jihad, "To live in Tehran and not surgically enhance something would be like going to a designer sample sale and walking out empty handed." Interestingly, the nose bandage is a status symbol in Tehran and some even wear a nose bandage purely for social credit, when really no operation had been performed.

Why the Iranian obsession with appearance? In the case of nose jobs, there's a fairly straightforward answer: Since the Revolution, in 1979, the face has been the only part of the female body others could see, so fixating on it makes sense. But an emphasis on beauty also has deep historical roots in Iran. As one local told me, "Traditionally, Iranians believed that by taming and beautifying 'rough,' 'savage,' and 'uncontrolled' nature, it would lead to a higher level of godliness and spirituality. The word 'paradise' comes from the ancient Farsi for 'garden' and is a symbol of this consciousness." Indeed, a popular Persian carpet motif is a microcosm of this: It is a bird's eye view of a garden--walls around the edges, a fountain in the middle--a symbol of perfection brought into the house. Another Arab friend of mine had a cruder, but related thought about why Iranians obsess over appearance. "They have a superiority complex," he said--in other words, beauty is a way to show that they're a superior, more civilized people.

Finally, some before and afters of Western celebrities. Beware: it isn't always pretty.

The value of an intact hymen :: Gulf News

I read this morning in Gulf News about the black market for hymen restoration in the UAE. The price is Dh10,000. It is illegal for an unmarried woman to have her hymen surgically restored, but not illegal for a married woman to do so. Why a married woman would want such surgery I couldn't tell you, but it does give cover for the clinics that offer these procedures.

Why an unmarried woman would want the procedure is easy to explain: this culture highly values virginity in a bride and uses an intact hymen as the test. Vaginal intercourse, however, is not the only way the hymens are broken. An unintended consequence of the high value of a hymen is that girls avoid sports and other exercise. The GN article makes it sound as if only girls who are not vaginal virgins would want the procedure -- false, of course.

Secret Dubai has also posted on the story. She is wrong, though, in concluding that hymen restoration will make the value of an intact hymen zero. It will, though, mean that girls who have been raped will no longer be unmarriageable. That is, as long as: their identities are not made public, they can afford the surgery, the authorities do not crack down on the black market, and mothers of the husband-to-be do not insist on an invasive inspection to determine whether there has been surgery.

There is a way, actually, that Secret Dubai could be right. That is if the ready availability of hymen restoration changes behavior and more women engage in premarital sex. Then having an intact hymen would prove very little about whether you were a virgin or not.

GN has a companion piece entitled, 'If cosmetic operation is to deceive someone it is a crime', which explains why hymen restoration is regarded as a religious crime.

What about breast augmentation (deception of fertility) or nose jobs (deception of beauty of future children)? These are legal in the UAE.

Bodies of knowledge

Washington Post, page A01:

Medicine didn't have much of a reputation back then [1807]. . . . And anyone serious about the study of anatomy had to get bodies -- somehow.

Without dissections, the only way medical students could really learn was in surgery, said Ronn Wade, director of the Maryland State Anatomy Board. "And they didn't have anesthesia then. It's kind of hard to learn anatomy when you're trying to cut something out [and] the patient's screaming and yelling and hemorrhaging."

U-Md. was the first school in the country to make dissection compulsory, Pitrof said. But it wasn't until the late 1800s, with a growing recognition of the importance of medical education, that Maryland legislators made it legal for the medical school to use unclaimed bodies.

In some countries, scientists were allowed to use bodies from poorhouses or of criminals hanged from gallows. But there was plenty of grave robbing, too -- enough so that wealthy people sometimes put slabs of stone over tombs or hired guards to stay by grave sites until the bodies could decompose.
. . .
You'd think selling bodies would be ancient history. But despite long-running programs allowing people to donate their organs and bodies after death for medical science, this year a black market of body parts made headlines nationally and internationally. In a case in California, for example, hundreds of bodies were illegally carved up.

With growing demand for tissue and bone, some corpses were disappearing, with organs and other body parts sold to medical research facilities, tissue banks and the like.

Hmmm. Seems like the Washington Post would want to more carefully research a page 1 article even if it is a puff piece. As recently posted at Marginal Revolution,

One of the most bizarre aspects of the organ shortage is that it is illegal to pay for cadaveric organs for use in transplants but it is legal to pay for cadavers. That's right, it's illegal to pay people to donate their organs for the purpose of saving lives but medical schools can pay people to donate their bodies so that plastic surgeons can practice their nip and tuck.

Oddly, just a week ago the Post ran an article by experts pointing out that the sale of cadavers is legal. An extract:

Medical schools routinely pay for the cremation or burial (often with elaborate memorial ceremonies) of the people whose bodies were donated to them for medical research and student training. In contrast, it is against federal law to offer any compensation for transplant organ procurement, including paying for organ donors' funeral expenses. This creates a bizarre asymmetry in the treatments of organ and whole body donations.

Given the current cost of funerals, the savings from donating bodies to medical schools can be substantial. This is especially true in states with funeral industry--protective regulations that are intended to keep out low-cost competitors. Those states provide us an opportunity to test empirically the effects of compensation on whole-body donation and, in turn, to extrapolate whether there is any merit to the criticisms of organ donation compensation.

If potential whole body donors respond to financial incentives, then we ought to see more body donations in stringently regulated states where funeral prices are higher. That is, in fact, what the data show.

Aside. Some of the best nose jobs in the world are performed in Iran because surgeons get a lot of practice. Here's why:

Iran's strict Islamic dress code has backfired in at least one big way.

Some young Iranian women are more obsessed with their appearance than their counterparts in the West.

And, as CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, they're lining up in record number to improve on the look nature gave them with cosmetic surgery.

The most popular form of plastic surgery in America is liposuction, but in Iran, where the female form is kept largely under wraps, women prefer to spend their money where they can show it off.

So Iran, where the morality police used to confiscate eyeliner and lip gloss, is now the nose job capital of the world.

Iranian men are joining in.

The evolutionary game theory of makeup :: Daily Mail

Quote:

Among those with make-up, the pattern was lost and the results far more random, suggesting that the cosmetics acted as a leveller, cancelling out the natural advantage of the attractive volunteers.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, concluded: "The use of make-up may compensate for or mask cues indicating low hormone levels."

The effects of nature (biological success) mean that men are hard-wired to find women with high estrogen levels more attractive. Make-up makes up for low estrogen levels. Evolution works at such a slow rate relative to the spread of cosmetics that women can fake this appearance.

Does this mean attractive women are wasting time and money on cosmetics? Are women in a cosmetics arms race? Or could an attractive woman distinguish herself from the crowd by using less make-up? She could, and it would be worthwhile, if (1) she wears make up to be attractive to men, and (2) the men she wants to attract are intelligent enough to figure out that she is distinguishing herself.