InHealth: The Male Plastic Surgery Patient

By Alissa Shulman, M.D., F.A.C.S

How common is plastic surgery for men?

Truthfully, the number of males undergoing aesthetic surgery has steadily increased. However, the numbers will never even approach equality. 

Women and men just think differently! In my experience, men DO NOT have surgery to impress other men. For example, I have never seen my husband notice another person “checking him out.” However, he is quick to note every time someone slows down in traffic to look at his truck! Even the term “dad body” is not taken as a criticism. Wrinkles on men just make them “more distinguished” — on women, the term is “old and haggard.”

Women tend to have aesthetic plastic surgery for themselves and their friends’ opinions. Most of my male patients have sought my help after assisting a loved one during their surgical experience. That made them become comfortable with me and my practice. 

What types of plastic surgery are 

men getting?

Most of the male image concerns involve the neck, belly, and “love handles.” 

For the neck, the options are a lower facelift or a direct neck lift. A lower facelift leaves more hidden scars. A direct neck lift leaves scars that lie over the “turkey gobbler area” and can usually be camouflaged under a shirt collar, but not so much for the more casually attired man. Many of the scars of facial aesthetic surgery are hidden within the hair line, so this poses a challenge for men who have male pattern baldness. For them, those “distinguished” male wrinkles are usually the only place in which to hide a scar.

The belly rarely shrinks as we age, and it is often my challenge to give a man the bad news that their belly fat surrounds internal organs and is known as visceral fat. There is NO SURGERY that can safely remove this type of visceral belly fat. Sometimes there is enough external/subcutaneous fat present to be worth removing. Then the options run from non-surgical techniques such as Coolsculpt, which is best for pinchable areas where only a small improvement is needed, to liposuction, which surgically removes fat through tiny incisions. None of these methods address visceral fat. 

If there is a reasonable layer of external/subcutaneous fat, then reducing this can help the waistline, but this is rarely the case. For visceral fat, general weight loss and core muscle toning is the best. 

In my practice, there is a slow trickle of men requiring abdominal skin reduction, usually in the form of abdominoplasty. I rarely use the term “tummy-tuck” for them. (Perhaps I will figure out a more masculine term – maybe “Core Contouring!”)

Love handles do well with liposuction or Coolsculpt, depending on the amount of fat. Then it is just a matter of how many areas require fat reduction. Based on the individual, we can discuss which mode is both the safest and financially reasonable. Fortunately for men, an abundance of body hair also includes a good blood supply, so they usually experience better skin shrinkage and tightening after fat reduction. 

Alissa Shulman, M.D., F.A.C.S
Sovereign Plastic Surgery
1950 Arlington St., Suite 112
Sarasota, FL 34239
941.366.5476
www.sovereignps.com