Booby Trap: Breast surgery is the new rage in India

Woo hoo! It's Happy Cleavage Day. How should I celebrate?" tweeted Poonam Pandey on March 30. She did not get explicit about what she actually did on the "happy" day coined by a lingerie brand. But the self-proclaimed 21-year-old, who shot to fame during the Cricket World Cup in 2011 by offering to run naked around Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai to motivate Team India, celebrates her cleavage every day. She posts pictures of her formidable bust line on Twitter and flaunts her assets in YouTube videos. Although she trashes the rumours, social-networking busybodies are busy figuring out the mystery of her breasts: "Did Poonam Pandey get a boob job done or not?"

Breast-watchers have found a new hobby: Tell real breasts from fake. On the 50th anniversary of breast implants, an Indian surgery secret is bursting out of the lingerie closet. The popularity of aesthetic surgery to enhance and reshape breasts is exploding in metro India, making it one of the top 10 countries globally. Cleavage is the new self-esteem. The market has expanded from socialites and film stars to upper and middle classes: Size-zero girls, wannabe brides, ambitious professionals to 40-something mothers. Despite a health scare over cancerous breast implants from France breaking out around the world this year, boob jobs are becoming something of a national pastime in India.

Men have their own rationale. "Doc, can you do something about my breasts? I am getting married next month. I don't want to stand in a dhoti with my breasts hanging out." The young man, a software professional in Bangalore, wants to remove his "moobs" (or male boobs). To Dr M.S. Venkatesh, surgeon and professor at Ramaiah Medical College, he is just another patient of gynaecomastia, where hormones, genes, and sedentary life lead to abnormal accumulation of fat on male chests. The doctor cut out his breasts through a small incision below his areola (the small darkened area around the nipple). "Gynaecomastia is very common in Indian men," says Venkatesh. "Most of these are fatty accumulation that starts mostly during late puberty." When he started his career in 1994, he received merely 7-8 such patients in a year. Now, these comprise 35 per cent of all his surgeries.

Breast surgery has replaced the popular nose job in India in the last two years. With films, television ads, billboards and magazines showing six-pack male Adonises all the time and with new minimally-invasive surgery techniques within reach, men are reasserting their masculinity by taking recourse to new procedures in cosmetic surgery.

Courtesy India Today