Makeover man

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This was published 12 years ago

Makeover man

Less than a generation ago, any man having a nose job or eyelid lift would have been considered vain, but no longer.

By Tim Elliott

For some time now, 44-year-old James Corcoran and his nose have not got on. "It's okay," he says. "I mean, I'm not deformed or anything ..." But it is quite large, broad and a tiny bit bent, with a fleshy tip that performs a little curtsy whenever he smiles. A lot of people would consider it a "character nose", the kind of equipment you might see on a statue of a Roman senator. Which would be fine if Corcoran wanted to look like a Roman senator. But he doesn't. What Corcoran wants is to look younger, sleeker, more refined. And so he has decided to get a nose job, plus fat implants in his face, "just to smooth out the wrinkles and freshen up my appearance".

This decision came down partly to a midlife crisis (he separated from his wife seven months ago), and partly to self-improvement (he is a bodybuilding instructor, a self-taught computer expert and a martial arts black belt). But a lot of it was career. A bricklayer by trade, since 1999 Corcoran has worked as a correctional officer, first at Sydney's Long Bay jail and now at the district court in Wollongong, the city he lives in. A year and a half ago, however, he decided to get into acting. "Challenges, it's all about challenges," he says. "I want to do things that take me out of my comfort zone, and make me focus on something new. It's just the way I am."

Blepharoplasty - or eyelid surgery - is growing in popularity among newsreaders or men who do lots of public speaking.

Blepharoplasty - or eyelid surgery - is growing in popularity among newsreaders or men who do lots of public speaking.Credit: Louise Kennerley

But it hasn't been easy. Perhaps because of his chiselled physique and Chopper-esque facial hair, the only roles he's landed so far have been brief tough-guy parts - beating people up in Underbelly - or in advertisements for mobile phones and high-protein milkshakes. His career peak was playing a general on a galley in the arena spectacular Ben Hur, where he wangled a speaking role. ("Slaves! Ready to row? Row!") A new face, he figures, could change all that. "I'm looking for younger, better roles," he says. "But it's not all about the acting. It's a new lease on life. You're a long time old, so you have to make the most of it."

Corcoran's "new lease" begins in the country club environs of St Luke's, a tastefully decorated private hospital in Potts Point, Sydney. While Corcoran receives his knockout dose of propofol ("the Michael Jackson drug", according to one of the nurses), I meet his surgeon, Dr Jeremy Hunt, who is in the staff kitchen, breakfasting on instant coffee and joshing with the nurses. At just 45, Hunt is one of Sydney's most experienced plastic surgeons: you get the impression that, for him, doing another rhinoplasty sits somewhere between baking a cake and executing the perfect par three at Royal Sydney golf course. "It's Lego for big boys," he tells me.

Australian paparazzo Darren Lyons sporting a surgically-enhanced six-pack (left).

Australian paparazzo Darren Lyons sporting a surgically-enhanced six-pack (left).

After scrubbing up, Hunt leads me into the operating theatre, with its bleached light and blinking machines. A small team of nurses orbits Corcoran, who is laid out on the operating table looking unexpectedly vulnerable and vaguely sacrificial. Hunt goes to work, slicing the base of Corcoran's septum and around the insides of his nostrils. Then, folding the fleshy envelope of the nose towards Corcoran's forehead, Hunt exposes the naked nub of cartilage and bone, a raw gristly redness that looks like something you'd find in a butcher's bin.

For the next hour, Hunt chops, chisels, scrapes and saws. He uses a rasp. He uses scissors. He uses electrical diathermy (that is, a soldering iron). Rhinoplasty is an alarmingly robust endeavour - carpentry of the face, really. At one point, Hunt has his chisel deep inside Corcoran's nasal cavity, right up near his eye socket, while a nurse bangs on it with a hammer. Donk! Donk! Donk! "Go on, give it to him," Hunt says. "He's a big boy." Then: "Whoa! Hear that different tone? That means you've hit skull."

Flapping the skin back over, Hunt then leans on Corcoran's nose with his hands and, using his body weight, breaks it on both sides (Pop! ... Pop!). He then squishes it back up like a little tent, intermittently bending down to check its profile before returning with the chisel to shave off fractions of bone until, finally, he seems satisfied. "That," he says, "is a damn fine nose!"

I hope so. Together with the fat implants, the whole thing is costing Corcoran $17,000. Not that money was going to hold him back. "At one stage my daughter, who is 17, offered to pay," Corcoran had told me the day before. "She said, 'Dad, one day, when I'm rich, I'll pay for your operation!' And I said, 'Nup, I can't wait. I'll be famous before you are.' "

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The enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant once wrote that "out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made". But Kant had never heard of high-def liposuction or endoscopic brow lifts. Today, many Australians are not content to simply live within the confines of their own crooked timbers, preferring instead to submit to cosmetic procedures, both invasive and non-invasive, from chin implants to eyelid lifts and otoplasty (ear pinning). According to the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), there were 69,812 cosmetic surgery procedures performed in 2011, and a further 31,000 non-surgical procedures, such as Botox injections and laser treatments. (This represented a hefty drop on 2010, when a total of 164,000 procedures were performed - a decrease the ASPS blames on the GFC.)

The traditional market for this has, of course, been women. Increasingly, however, men are following suit. ASPS doesn't categorise procedures by gender, but the society's NSW president, Dr Graham Sellars, says he sees more men every year. "Across the board, cosmetic procedures are more socially acceptable, probably because of reality TV and glossy mags that broach the subject more openly and frequently. And that acceptance is extending to men. The fact that Gordon Ramsay and Mickey Rourke have both admitted to having surgery certainly hasn't hurt."

Sellars has performed most of the common procedures men undergo: Botox, ear corrections, eyelid surgery, tummy and arm tucks, "moob jobs" (breast reductions for men) and, most popularly, rhinoplasty. The only ones he hasn't tackled are calf and buttock implants, penile enlargements and the terrifying-sounding scrotal lift, for guys who want to tidy up their dangling testicles.

The rise of internet porn has driven an increase in procedures involving male genitalia - just as it has for labiaplasties in women - but surgeons tend to be cautious about performing them. This is not, Sellars says, because they are especially risky but because of the "complex personalities" of patients most likely to request them. "Someone who wants a scrotal lift or penile enlargement - well, all I can say is that surgery isn't going to help what's going on in their psyche."

So why are men doing it to themselves? "All kinds of reasons," Sellars says. "It's not just vanity. Blepharoplasty [eyelid surgery] is very common, especially among newsreaders or men who do lots of public speaking; they want to look more alert. Likewise with neck lifts: I see older board members who feel young but don't look it, and they feel lots of pressure from the younger blood coming through. Men who have just got divorced are also more likely to have something done. It's human nature."

Other men see themselves engaged in some strange longevity experiment. When Corcoran told friends about his plans for a nose job, some suggested that, at 44, he was too old. "I was like, 'What? I plan to live to 107!' " (I point out that 107 is very specific, but he is unswayed. "I eat well. I have the body of a 24-year-old. Advancements in medicine should assist me to living till 107.")

Until recently, having any "work" done would have been unthinkable for Australian men, for whom displaying any trace of vanity was social death. Aussie men were meant to get sunburnt, drink beer, grow old and deal with it. We weren't meant to care. By and large, of course, we did care, we just didn't want anyone to know that we cared. Overseas, they seem less hung up about this. Last year, the Australian London-based paparazzo Darryn Lyons proudly displayed his surgically sculpted fake abs on the UK television show Celebrity Big Brother. "Basically, it's the male version of a boob job," he said.

Yet the Australian male ego is still there, lurking about, determined to make itself look better - without anyone else knowing. Which is where Dr Steven Liew comes in. Slight and cat-like, with long, swept-back hair, Liew is the man behind Shape Clinic, an up-market cosmetic surgery practice in Sydney's Darlinghurst (motto: "Every­one will notice, no one will know"). With its Balinese water features and recessed lighting, Shape seems more day spa than surgery, suffused with an air of languor that makes me feel like kicking off my shoes and ordering a cocktail.

Liew is 46 years old, but thanks to skin creams, Botox and regular fillers to his cheeks and chin, doesn't look a day over, well, 44. "Looking a bit haggard recently," he tells me, by way of apology.

Some people, such as Buddhists, are driven to increase gross national happiness. Liew is driven to increase gross national beautifulness. He's yet to meet a wrinkle he didn't want to fill or a jaw he couldn't make squarer. Sitting me down in his office, he turns on his computer. On the screen are the words: "The pursuit of beauty is and always has been an integral part of every human culture." He reads this to me - slowly - so as to make me understand.

once upon a time, liew used his surgical skills for more serious matters. In 2003, he operated for 12 hours on a woman from Papua New Guinea who'd had a tumour removed from her eye. "I reconstructed her face," he says. "Okay, I don't do that any more. I have gone 'to the dark side', as they say. And yes, the money is much better doing what I do now. But as Steve Jobs would say, it's not about the money. It's about the passion: I do this to transform lives. I do this to improve quality of life, which is more important than longevity."

Most of his clients are women, but his most demanding clients tend to be men. "There are some men I see who are just, I don't know if I can say this, but they're just fugly. And they suddenly want to be very, very, very good-looking. They say, 'I don't expect to look like Brad Pitt', but then they show me photos of someone with a jaw exactly like Brad Pitt's and another photo of some guy with eyes like Brad Pitt and another photo of a guy with cheekbones like Brad Pitt. Put them all together and you have Brad Pitt.

"And so I just have to control myself, which is hard, because I'm not a very diplomatic guy. But you need to break it slowly to these guys, like you would a woman when you are breaking up: 'It's me, not you.' That sort of thing."

Such are the miracles of modern cosmetic surgery, however, that there is usually something that can be done "that gives them a little bit of hope".

Liew shows me a photo of a man whose face he had injected with a sugar-based filler known as hyaluronic acid. "It's biogenetically engineered to be 95 per cent identical to human fat," Liew explains. When, on reflection, Liew decided that he had injected too much, he simply injected another substance, hyaluronidase, to dissolve it.

"It's almost like science fiction now," he says. "I see myself as a 21st-century shape-shifter."

It must be an incredible feeling of power, I say.

"Yes, sometimes."

Before I go, I ask Liew to give me a quick appraisal: how could he improve me? He pauses, squints, purses his lips. "Well, you have a big zit on your cheek - we'd have to get rid of that. And you've seen too much sun, you have blotchy skin and some acne scarring, but all that could be improved with some creams. You've obviously been worrying a lot, because you have forehead lines - I call them railway tracks - that aren't going to get any better. And when you think, you pull the corners of your mouth down: in 10 years you'll have marionette lines. So we could put Botox in the lower part of your face to ..."

To paralyse it? I offer.

"No, no, no! We never use that word. The Botox would simply soften up that part of your face."

As we age, Liew concludes, we get sadder, angrier, grumpier. We see more of the skeleton behind our face. "You will develop bitter folds, Tim. And I see it as my duty of care to save you from that."

Think back to when you were a kid: remember Superman and Spider-Man? Remember the toy soldiers you used to play with? Physically speaking, they were in proportion. “They were normal blokes,” Professor David Castle says. “These days, the superheroes and GI Joe figures are all massively ’roided up, which goes to show how the idea of the perfect male body has changed.”

As the chair of psychiatry at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, Castle is the author of books such as Living with Your Looks, and papers including To Be Superman: The Male Looks Obsession. He is not a fan of the cosmetic surgery industry. "It plays on male insecurity, about penis size, about muscle size; it's all bigger is better, and if you're not like that, then you're not attractive. The direct-to-public advertising they're allowed to do is quite dangerous, too. In magazines like Australian Cosmetic Surgery & Beauty, they'll show a pair of breasts and say, 'Breasts by such and such a surgeon', and the surgeon has almost signed them. If I did that in my game, had a picture of this smiling person with the headline, 'Happiness by Prof D. Castle', I'd be struck off."

More disturbing still is the nexus between cosmetic surgery and body dysmorphia, a mental illness that makes the sufferer excessively concerned with body image. "US figures suggest the rate of body dysmorphia in the general population is about two per cent, but in people who visit cosmetic surgeries it's 15 per cent."

Castle concedes that only some people respond to these pressures. "But that makes it more unfair, because the industry is, in a sense, taking advantage of those people."

One of the groups most vulnerable to heightened body awareness is gay men. One drizzly day in December, I visit 33-year-old Michael (not his real name) in his luxury high-rise apartment. Michael is broad-shouldered and gym-fit, with a cashew-nut-coloured tan. He is tall - 188 centimetres in his Salvatore Ferragamo lace-ups. But perhaps the most striking thing about him is his teeth, which have been whitened to such retina-scorching radiance they could serve as an alternative light source. "I just finished having them straightened this year," he says.

Michael is an interior designer. He likes straight lines and right angles. "I'm anti-eclectic," he says. "Picking up something in Morocco and hanging it on my wall doesn't interest me. I like things out of the box, all shiny and new."

Michael grew up in country Victoria, but moved to Sydney in 2000. "In the gay community in Sydney, you're surrounded by people who really look after themselves, and you can't help but benchmark yourself against them. It's shallow, but it's real, and I am guilty of it, too."

In October 2007, after years of lingering unhappiness with his physique, he finally embarked on his personal transformation. First he had liposuction to his abdomen, a procedure that, together with dieting and exercise, left him with a roll of loose skin, "like a bedsheet", around his stomach. He tried non-surgical treatments to shift it - skin-tightening creams, caffeine patches, even radio-frequency/ultrasonic deep-tissue heating - but nothing worked. So in 2009 he underwent an abdominal lipectomy (tummy tuck). Such procedures almost always entail follow-up treatments not mentioned in the brochures: in Michael's case there were laser treatments to minimise scars (six sessions), hyperbaric oxygen therapy to assist with healing (six sessions), and scar-revision surgery, where the surgeon tidied up the "dog's ears" left after the initial procedure ("a bit like tailoring a jacket, I suppose").

All up, Michael's tummy cost $23,000. And it doesn't end there. Staying in shape means having a personal trainer six days a week, and regular Botox shots in his forehead and temples, "as an insurance policy against wrinkles". He also has specially prepared meals delivered to his building by 7am every day. "It's very clean food. No sauce, no gravies, no dressings. Just clean carbs and

fibrous green vegetables."

Is it worth it? "Of course. I'm a healthier and happier person now." The only downside is that his tummy is largely numb. "But I can live with that."

He shows me his stomach, which I have to admit looks pretty good. Flat. Strong. Fat-free. Definitely magazine quality. "I have a new belly button," he laughs. "The old one got taken away when the skin was removed, so the surgeon just made me a new one."

Looks brand new, I say. Numb, but brand new.

James Corcoran's nose is also looking pretty flash. It's leaner, smaller and less bumpy; that irksome fleshy tip is no more. The fat implants are working well, too. "It's all been positive feedback from friends and family," he says. "I don't look completely different, just slightly better. My daughter is really happy about it. She's pleased that it wasn't a radical thing."

The next step is to update his acting portfolio. He's getting some shots done next month. "And then I'll start harassing my agent to get me auditions. I'm going to try to do as much as I can. I can't wait."

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