| Georg Ismar |
RIO DE JANEIRO (dpa) – Doctor Volney Pitombo likes to listen to Mozart while he cuts open the noses; a nurse pushes play on the stereo and the sound of a piano concerto fills the room.
Photos of the nose, which has a small bump on it and belongs to the 24-year-old man lying on the operating table, are pinned to an IV stand. Within 45 minutes the bump will be gone.
Pitombo, who runs an upmarket cosmetic surgery clinic in Rio de Janeiro, is the beneficiary of a growing craze for male beauty in Brazil.
“The number of men who want plastic surgery has been increasing for years,” he says. “In terms of surgical operations I think we (Brazilians) are now number one.”
In 2014, around 275,000 men underwent operations; five years earlier it was just 72,000.
There are no conclusive figures for 2015 yet but Pitombo, who’s also president of the Association of Plastic Surgeons in Rio, says the trend is upwards.
Volney Pitombo, plastic surgeon, alters the nose of a fee-paying male patient under anaesthetic in his operating theatre in Rio de Janeiro, January 14
Smoothing noses, pinning back ears, tightening up eyelids and liposuction are the most common procedures, he says.
And the worst recession for decades and inflation running at 10.7 per cent have hardly dented his business.
“Even when there’s a crisis, people still want to do something for their well-being,” says the 63-year-old, who has an international reputation as ‘Dr Nose’.
He has operated on around 8,000 noses in his career, with patients also coming from the United States.
Businessman Enzo, 40, has had the loose skin around his chin tightened, his nose done and his ears pinned at a cost of 15,000 dollars.
“I felt bad when I looked at photos of myself. I had such a long nose,” he says five months after the operations. “I feel so much better. It’s another reality, psychologically very important too.”
He says he talks about it openly with his friends. “And now lots of them want to do the same.”
It’s around 8am and Pitombo and his three assistants are cutting out a piece of cartilage that is responsible for the bump in the current nose. Blood is wiped away, Mozart warbles softly in the background.
“Around 40 per cent of our patients are men,” says Carla Santana, who’s been Pitombo’s assistant for around 16 years.
“Now we’re making the nose into more of a pyramid shape,” she explains as they finish up.
Then she holds a photo of the man’s original nose beside his sleeping form – his new nose is straight and well shaped, he ought to be pleased with it.
Liposuction is also becoming increasingly popular, says Santana. It’s hardly surprising, given the cult of the body on Copacabana, the famed Atlantic beach where joggers already fill the sands at 6am while others do chin-ups on the outdoor gyms.
But the city also has people who tend to the other extreme. A cemetery especially for the obese opened in Rio recently, with graves that can hold corpses weighing up to 500 kilogrammes.
Volney Pitombo, plastic surgeon, smiles in his private operating theatre in Rio de Janeiro. Nicknamed Dr Nose, he reckons he has beautified 8,000 noses in his career
A male patient after nose straightening (front) and a photo of his nose before the operation (rear). PHOTOS: DPA
Pitombo moves on to the next operating room and gets started on his next patient. He does a few stretches and then begins pinning back the ears of a 31-year-old man.
The patient wants to keep his short hair and thinks his ears stick out too much. The laser used for the operation makes a sound like a soldering gun and it smells a bit of burnt skin.
Then the plastic surgeon reshapes the man’s nose and just an hour later, the patient’s a new man. More or less. The sound of Mozart is punctuated by the beeps of a machine which indicates that his heartbeat is steady.
In the clinic’s foyer, there are expensively bound books of photos, including a copy of renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgados’ book Genesis.
“Plastic surgery is also a kind of art. I want to make my patients happier,” says Pitombo.
And in Brazil it’s become more and more normal, with rich parents even paying for their sons and daughters to be operated on.
“Women love to talk about it when they’ve got new breasts,” says Pitombo.
But men are also talking more openly about surgery. “Some of them say at parties quite proudly, ‘I’ve had my nose done.’”
The beauty craze is clear to see in the city, which will host the Summer Olympics this year.
At the weekends, the beaches are almost like fashion catwalks.
Pitombo has only had to refuse one case.
“A man came and said, ‘I want to look just like Elvis Presley.’” Lips, nose, cheeks, throat – he wanted everything to look like the king of rock n’roll.
“I said I might be able to create a bit of a likeness. But I couldn’t make him into a copy.”
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