Reviewer: Sandra A. Collins, M.A., M.L.S.(Duquesne University)
Description: This is a review and analysis of available Internet sites for a variety of plastic and cosmetic surgery sites catering to male needs. It includes URLs, short descriptions, and some screen shots.
Purpose: This is intended as an informational guide for men considering cosmetic surgery who are looking for information about procedures, treatments, and qualified physicians. The author sees this as a starting point only for gathering information and encourages readers to work with their physicians. Her efforts focus almost exclusively on elective cosmetic or aesthetic procedures rather than reconstructive. While she successfully meets her objectives, there seems to be just as much — if not more — need for information to guide reconstructive surgeries, which meet as great an emotional need.
Audience: The audience is the general public, since this work is relatively free from arcane medical jargon and the surgical specifics of procedures beyond what's basically involved in things like rhinoplasty, hair transplantation, and body contouring. On this, the author seems a credible authority since her focus is on providing a readily accessible guide for the nonmedical community.
Features: The book covers some non gender-specific issues like searching the Web, basic cosmetic surgery sites, and surgeries common to both men and women like liposuction, augmentation and implants. Her chapters specific to men include male breast reduction, removal or augmentation of areas of the face, head and neck, and penile concerns. Like her previous Internet Guide to Cosmetic Surgery for Women, she provides URLs as well as short descriptions of the sites. One shortcoming might be that only three chapters out of nine directly deal with male-only issues like penile enlargement or hair transplantation.
Assessment: This is very similar in content, format, and audience to the author's earlier book. The difference here is that while its intended audience is men, less than 20 percent of the book is truly gender-specific. While hair restoration covers 13 pages, things like penile enlargement only merit 4 pages (perhaps because it's not endorsed by any professional medical association, as the author notes, begging the question why it's here at all). Many of the sites are commercial in nature, so it is questionable how unbiased the information is. With the caveat that Internet guides as a whole are an ephemeral medium, this is a basic, no-frills first step.
