CAIRO - There has been a lot of controversy over ex-MP Anwar el-Belkimy's cosmetic surgery and it seems that many men like to indulge in such surgery. El-Belkimy was kicked out of Egypt's ultra-conservative Nour Party after it was discovered that the bandages covering his face were not, as he had been claiming, the result of a vicious beating meted out by armed gunmen, but rather of a nose job. This, Egypt's first political scandal in the post-Mubarak era, was made especially scandalous because Nour belongs to the Islamist Salafi movement, which views cosmetic surgery as a sin. In Egypt, men who have cosmetic surgery keep it under wraps, in more ways than one, while women always make a show of having surgery to make them look like film stars. Some men have cosmetic surgery before marriage; it may be to get rid of an ‘unpleasant shape' in their bodies or it could be something more serious. Ahmed, a 30-year-old engineer, decided to have a mole removed from his face. Since childhood, people had kept asking him about it; some of them refused to have anything to do with him, as they felt alienated by this ‘scary' black lump. “I asked a girl to marry me, but she said no. When I heard about a clinic using lasers to get rid of moles, I went there straightaway for treatment," he says. Another young man was even more unfortunate. This 22-year-old, who for obvious reasons insists on anonymity, had developed breasts. When he had them removed, he never suffered any more embarrassment in public. These days, men and women alike often go in for hair implants, liposuction and Botox injections for removing wrinkles. "More and more men are having beauty treatment these days – to decrease breast size, for nose reshaping, Botox injections, laser hair removal and treatment to get rid of unpleasant skin problems," plastic surgeon Moustafa Hemeida told Akher Sa'a magazine. “I consider plastic surgery to be a luxury, if it isn't done to treat fractures, burns or deformities.” In some cases, people with a psychological disorder want surgery because they hate the way they look. "If a patient lacks self-confidence, a surgeon must play the psychiatrist and explain to him that plastic surgery isn't like a magic that will suddenly change everything for the better," says Dr Mahmoud Nassef, the famous surgeon who operated on el-Belkimy.
