No matter how much Iran cracks down on “inappropriate” dress and modesty laws, citizens, namely women are increasingly getting influenced by modern Western culture.
The Rhinology Research Society of Iran conducted a study in cooperation with Johns Hopkins University which shows that the rate of nose jobs per capita in Iran is seven times than that in the United States and is currently leading the world in rhinoplasty surgeries, The Guardian reports.
Some Iranian women as young as 14 — 200,000 Iranians total per year — are getting their faces cosmetically altered to resemble “doll faces” of the actors they see in Hollywood films from the west.
“They won’t let us display our beauty,” one woman said of hijab, The Guardian reports. “It’s human nature to want to seek out attention with a beautiful figure, hair, skin … but hijab doesn’t let you do that. So we have to satisfy that instinct by displaying our ’art’ on our faces.”
Most of the surgeries include reducing the size of the nose and having the tip point more upward.
Cosmetic procedures cost five to six times the average monthly wage in Iran, but The Guardian cites a few women who got creative in making it work.
One woman was granted a loan to buy a car and she consequentially sold the car to pay for her surgeries.
As the demand skyrockets, a growing number of operations are being performed by unlicensed plastic surgeons.
Only 157 cosmetic surgeons in Tehran are licensed, but about 7,000 people are actually performing the operations, The Daily Mail reports.
There has also been a surge in botched operations, causing irreparable damage in some cases.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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