'Bro-tox' on the rise

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Beauty treatments like Botox are usually considered the domain of women, but the popularity of the procedure among men is on the rise.

In the US last year 300000 men received Botox, up 10 per cent from 2010, leading some to dub the trend ‘Bro-tox’.

According to a report on US television show Good Morning America, many of those men were given Botox vouchers by concerned partners.

It isn’t just Botox that men are warming to - the number of men in the US who underwent plastic surgery rose 45 per cent since 2000. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says 1.1 million men in the US went under the knife in 2010. Procedures that saw the sharpest rise in popularity among men were face lifts, liposuction and eyelid surgeries.

The increase in the number of men signing up to cosmetic procedures has been attributed to reduced recovery time and the growing concern among men that appearance matters.

US psychologist and author Vivian Diller calls the trend the closing of the ‘beauty gap’, as men invest more time in personal grooming.

“We are all living in a culture that is increasingly equating youth with attractiveness and sex appeal, one that has virtually programmed us to have a crisis over an aging appearance," she wrote in a piece entitled ‘Men Need a Lift Too’.


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