Nipped. Tucked. You?
Sick of the flap of skin you just can't erase from your abs? More and more guys are turning to cosmetic surgery to fix their physical flaws. But should you join them?
by Cora Daniels
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Take Dan, a 31-year-old banker from Denver. He decided to turn to surgery after a two-year battle with a problem he realized he would never be able to fix: man boobs (excess breast tissue, a condition doctors call gynecomastia). In the end, Dan weighed his options and decided to fork over nearly $7,000 for male-breast-reduction surgery. For him, the decision made sense. No matter how hard he worked or how perfect he made his diet, experts told him surgery was the only way he’d ever end up with a flat chest. For Dan and the thousands of guys out there just like him, doctors say the problem with their bodies isn’t always the result of poor lifestyle or bad diet (although both obviously contribute to breast growth and obesity). Rather, the issue may simply be heredity. Breasts are made of breast tissue and adipose tissue (fat), and all guys have it; some men just grow too much of it during puberty. For many it goes away, and for others it’s barely noticeable. But for some, it’s a problem that only gets worse, especially as they get older and build fat and muscle mass. The phenomenon is far more common than you’d think. No wonder, then, that enough men seek treatment every year that breast-reduction surgery is the fifth-most popular surgical procedure in the books. (Nose jobs, surprisingly, are the No. 1 surgical procedure among men, followed by eyelid surgery, liposuction, hair transplants, then breast reduction.)
And as fate would have it, working out just won’t make the problem go away. In fact, gynecomastia may be even more common in men who lift weights regularly, as in Dan’s case. Some specialists believe that may be the result of certain over-the-counter supplements. Anything that changes hormonal levels in the body, they say, be it a pill, powder, liquid, or food, may send the body into a tailspin. Mess with those hormones and your body is only too happy to go back to puberty mode, causing all sorts of potential disasters, including the growth of your own personal D-cup rack. Dan believes that’s just what happened to him.
When he was in his 20s, he worked out heavily. He built a gym in his basement and lifted weights at least five times a week, all the while taking as many supplements as he could get his hands on. At the height of his fitness, about five years ago, he would boast to friends about being “190 pounds and solid muscle.” Then, two years ago, he started feeling a hard lump on each side of his chest. Although his chest didn’t look any less buff, especially in a T-shirt, it began to hurt when he lifted. Hoping to solve the problem, he had a physical and ended up with the diagnosis of gynecomastia. He wasn’t thrilled with the possibility of an expensive surgery, so despite the pain, he tried to endure—until a shoulder injury sidelined him from working out. That’s when his breasts really started to grow. “I’d worked so hard to look amazing and all of a sudden my body just melted,” he says.
Although he knew he was gaining weight, Dan didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten until he saw a videotape of himself. Unintentionally, to compensate for his developing breasts, he had begun to slouch forward—it was his subconscious way of keeping people from seeing his extended chest. “I looked terrible,” he admits. That’s when he decided to book his initial appointment for surgery. “I was always the guy at the beach with my T-shirt off. I didn’t recognize myself all hunched over,” he says. Two weeks later, still bandaged and a bit swollen, Dan says his only regret is that he didn’t find a plastic surgeon sooner. “This problem destroyed me for two years.”
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