Spotlight: The rise of the beard transplant

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This was published 4 years ago

Spotlight: The rise of the beard transplant

By Greg Callaghan

Believe it or not, an increasing number of Aussie men are having surgery to boost their crop of facial follicles, following the success of a new procedure in the US and Europe. To understand why a bloke might be tempted to get a beard transplant, you need to appreciate the burden of having patchy growth on your chinny chin chin. We're talking beards with more holes than Swiss cheese, moustaches with lone hairs like cat's whiskers and fuzzy tufts poking out like leftovers on a barber shop floor.

Patchy coverage (from left): Matthew McConaughey, Keanu Reeves and David Beckham have all been declared beard-challenged.

Patchy coverage (from left): Matthew McConaughey, Keanu Reeves and David Beckham have all been declared beard-challenged.Credit: Alamy and AAP

It's not just everyday hipsters who can be beard challenged. David Beckham's beard is as patchy as a quilt, Keanu Reeves's is just mangy, Brad Pitt's is a scraggly mess, and Matthew McConaughey's is a riot of bum fluff. But when you're as handsome as those guys, you can get away with anything. According to Marie Claire's authoritative 2018 article, "23 Hot Dudes with Bad Facial Hair", stars like Pitt and Beckham should invest in a razor, which indeed they do most of the time.

Survey after survey has shown that women prefer clean-shaven men or, at most, a dusting of stubble, which doesn't stop blokes from growing beards as a simple assertion of their masculinity, especially if they're losing hair on top.

As beard thickness is dictated by genes and skin type, until recently you couldn't do much about patchy coverage. But beard transplants have now progressed to the point where small clumps of hair, transplanted from the middle of the back of the neck, can be sown into facial skin, even tissue scarred by burns or teen acne. It can take months for the regrowth to take a firm hold, but once it does you'll be seriously investing in razor blades.

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"The key to a good beard is uniformity and symmetry," says plastic surgeon Dr Peter Paraskevas, who on average performs one beard transplant a month in his Melbourne clinic. Many of his customers are smooth-faced Asian men: a recent client had a full beard transplant, which took two 12-hour days and cost upwards of $25,000.

But first, check the back of your neck. "Not everyone is a candidate; they need to have enough donor hair to implant," notes Paraskevas.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.

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