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AS
Sylvester Stallone rocks the heavy guns in his latest
film, look closely at a man past 60 with drum-tight
muscles and a crag-free face.
Tough
guy Sly has defied the sag and furrow of age...and yet,
is there something about him that stretches credulity?
Rambo himself has denied widespread and persistent
rumors of scalpel work.
“No, I
haven’t had plastic surgery,” Stallone told the Mail on
Sunday, a London newspaper, last year.
Stallone, however, fits the profile of an increasing
number of senior baby boomers, not just celebrities
fighting the spotlight’s cruel glare but regular guys
seeking to cinch the droop of time.
Although
far more women get face-lifts and other cosmetic surgery
each year, the number of men seeking nips and tucks has
increased dramatically in the past decade, according to
the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (Asaps).
In 2006
American men underwent about 1 million surgical and
nonsurgical procedures. Knifeless work on men, including
Botox injections, has increased 722 percent since 1997,
according to the organization. The American Academy of
Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported that
all types of work for men increased 57 percent between
2002 and 2006, compared with 9 percent for women.
Dr.
Joseph O’Connell, a
Westport
plastic surgeon, said he’s been skeptical of such
statistics, but “I think, finally, in Fairfield County,
we have seen that uptick in male plastic surgery that
has been reported throughout the nation.”
O’Connell said he’s done work on celebrities, but he
won’t name names because of patient confidentiality.
Also, as a regional spokesman for the Asaps and the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons, “we really feel
that to speculate on whether or not a person [has had
cosmetic surgery] is inappropriate,” O’Connell said.
Keep in
mind, he said, that a man’s health and other factors
also can affect his looks. Stallone, for example, has
attributed his taut package to consistent exercise.
Still, O’Connell acknowledged, it’s obvious that many
male stars have had work done.
“Youth
is even more important to them than it is to everyone
else,” he said.
Or as
the famous fashion-rater, Mr. Blackwell, said, “The
cruel part of Hollywood is they don’t want you to get
older, and your audience doesn’t want you, as their
hero, to get older because if you get older, they are.”
Plastic surgery has not been kind to every celebrity.
Country music star Kenny Rogers talked about his
popped-and-propped eyes in a 2006 interview.
“Last
year I had so many lines coming in at the side of my
eyes up here,” Rogers told People magazine. “So I went
in and got my eyes done, and I’m not happy about it.”
Robert
Blake also sought the fountain that many of his
celebrity buddies had sipped from. Asked about his
face-lift, the fireplug movie and TV star told People in
1995 that “all of the guys I went to acting class with
who became movie stars look the same way they did back
in acting class, except they have mouths like lizards.
They all have permanent smiles. They look like they
could be my sons. So I went and did it. Now I look like
them.”
Blake
(this was years before he was accused and subsequently
acquitted of killing his wife) told the magazine that he
had warned his plastic surgeon about a reptilian result.
“I told
the doc, ‘If you make me look like a lizard, like
everybody else, I’m going to kill you. All I want is to
look a little more rested, to take a little of the
mileage off.’ “
Around
the country, more stars and citizens “find themselves so
displeased with the results of their surgeries that they
are paying top dollar to undo what they had done,”
according to a recent story in the Chicago Tribune.
“The
demand for such procedures is so high that some doctors
now promote themselves as ‘revision plastic surgeons’
and devote up to 50 percent of their practices to such
cases,” the newspaper reported.
Celebrities who have been quoted recently regretting
their manipulated mugs include singer Julio Iglesias,
who called plastic surgery on his sagging neck and jaw
line the “worst thing” he’d ever done.
A few
other surgically adjusted male
Hollywood stars, however, have said they had no complaints. Face-lifts
and surgery to debag and tighten the eye area, called
blepharoplasty, are two popular procedures among stars
and regular citizens. George Clooney said last year, “I
had my eyes done. Can you tell? I think it’s important
to look awake.”
Tony
Curtis, 82, said about 10 years ago, “The key to it all,
honey, is no sugar, a good-looking girlfriend and an
excellent surgeon.”
The most
popular cosmetic surgeries for all men today are, in
order, liposuction, rhinoplasty (nose job), eyelid
surgery, male breast reduction (gynecomastia) and
face-lifts, according to the Asaps. Noncelebrity men who
come to his Westport practice are mainly middle-aged and
at the peak of their earning potential, O’Connell said.
In
reports on the rise in plastic surgery for men around
the country in the past several years, patients have
said a bit of smoothing and tightening helped them
remain competitive in business.
“I think
they’re motivated by the culture of youth, because
that’s part of their business, and that could apply to a
CEO, as well as an actor,” O’Connell said.
Still,
regular guys are behind the curve compared with their
Hollywood counterparts, and far fewer men of all stripes
seek cosmetic surgery compared with women, who underwent
10.5 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures in
2006.
Typically, men seek face-lifts in their late 50s and
early 60s, about five years after most female patients,
O’Connell said.
“It’s OK
for a male to look a little more mature than a woman,”
he said.
But not
too mature, especially in
Hollywood. |
