The ability to grow full facial hair is often considered, however unfairly, a key indicator of masculinity and virility.
And hose who can't grow their own now have transplant options available to them — though they may not all be safe. In interviews with The Guardian, men who sought beard transplants explained what inspired them to finally go under the scalpel.
Vikram Arora, a 47-year-old man in Essex, England, told the newspaper that the sleek facial hair trends of the 1990s and early 2000s left him feeling lacking. He even, at one point, stole his sister's mascara to try to fill in his "patchy whiskers."
"Through most of my teens and early adulthood, I was left feeling that I didn’t look mature enough," Arora told the newspaper, "and definitely not masculine enough."
The Gen Xer had heard about beard transplants years before he ever began considering it seriously, for fear of the procedure. He wasn't wrong to do so — like with any other hair transplant, beard transplants involve taking hair grafts, or "follicular units" as they're called in industryspeak, from other parts of the body and inserting them onto the desired area.
After everyone began growing fuller beards during the COVID-19 lockdowns, however, Arora decided to finally book a consultation. In 2022, he met a hair transplant specialist named Nadeem Khan and one of his surgeons at their London clinic, and the next year he got the procedure done for himself, with 780 hair follicles transplanted from the back of his head to his beard area — and was absolutely thrilled with the results.
Like some of the other specialists who spoke to The Guardian about the trend, Khan — the owner of the clinic Arora went to — had been doing hair transplants for more than 15 years.
Initially, he said, his main patients were soldiers or others who'd experienced some sort of trauma that made growing hair difficult. After celebs began speaking out about restoring their hairlines with transplants, however, the taboo surrounding the practice began to diminish — and in the years since the COVID lockdowns, requests for beard transplants have soared, Khan said.
As Turkey has become known as a medical tourism destination for those looking for hair transplants, some men are finding their way to Istanbul to get their beards done, too. The results from those trips vary from satisfied customers to those less fortunate — like 24-year-old French student Mathieu Vigier Latour, who tragically died by suicide after his Istanbul beard transplant by an unqualified technician led to pain, scarring, and body dysmorphia.
With beard transplants as with any other cosmetic procedure, the gap between legitimate practitioners and dangerous charlatans is huge, and the results might not just be dangerous, but potentially deadly. Whether you're shelling out to have hair removed from your head and shoved onto your chin in the UK, Turkey, or anywhere, side effects can and do occur — and someone is going to be profiting off your insecurities regardless.
More on body mods: Let’s Talk About Botched Weiner Implants
Share This Article