Meet the men getting their legs surgically lengthened

“I asked myself, ‘am I crazy to get this done?’, but the way people treat me now makes it worth it.” A few years ago, Harry* had surgery on his tibia and his femur to go from 5’7” to 5’11”. Like many other men who are turning to this increasingly popular cosmetic procedure, he feels liberated from his insecurities after a surgeon broke his leg bones and pulled them apart with clamps every six hours as they tried to fuse back together. Ranging from £15,000 to over £100,000 in some cases, it takes months, if not years, to fully recover complete mobility, battling infections, nerve damage, and insomnia. Given the risks and costs, why would Harry, or anybody, choose to do this seemingly mediaeval procedure? The end result: potentially 10 extra inches.

Limb lengthening is a surgical procedure which increases the length of a bone in a patient’s arm or leg while also stretching the surrounding muscles, tendons and ligaments. The surgery is medically performed most commonly for those needing physical adjustments due to limb length discrepancies, says Dr Nima Heidari, an orthopaedic and trauma surgeon, but it is also done for people who ask for it voluntarily, most often “young men who fixate on height being a reason for their lack of success and they’re willing to go through a huge amount of pain to change that.”

About 75 per cent of patients inquiring about this surgery are men. Dr Assayag, from the International Center for Limb Lengthening, says that most of his patients usually work in finance or IT, “where they can do a prolonged journey while still working from home”. Not all are wealthy – most in fact have been saving for years, treating this surgery “like a cash down on a house”, with some even getting into debt to cover unexpected costs from complications down the line. There seems to be no slowing down either: one clinic claimed that patient interest in their surgery has quintupled every year.

Harry, a software engineer, saved for years for this surgery, struggling with depression and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) to the extent that he was performing poorly at work because he couldn’t think of anything other than his height. It’s hard to judge just how many men specifically struggle with BDD, as stigma tends to prevent them from coming forward to seek help, but one study suggested that as many as 90 per cent of men struggle with body dissatisfaction and negative emotions. Dr Assayag believes that the majority of patients who undergo this surgery experience it to some degree. “If you’re willing to get both legs broken and undergo a six month to a year process, I believe it’s, by definition, body dysmorphia,” he says. In some cases, he has referred people to psychologists to address their problems beforehand.

Ryan*, a tech entrepreneur, grew from 5’4” to 5’7”. With the added height gained from his surgery, he says jokes from his friends finally halted and women became more likely to approach him. In Ryan’s view, the social respect a man gains from becoming taller is akin to the status women acquire from losing weight. It frustrates him that he felt compelled to get this surgery, but adds that “no matter how much we virtue signal, at the end of the day we are robots. We are measuring other people for breeding, we are asking sexually if they are a proper mate, it’s ingrained in us.”

Ryan’s view is extreme – many of us would likely take issue with his essentialist position that people are all pre-programmed “robots” for breeding – but he’s right to point out that society rewards individuals who conform to dominant beauty standards. Studies have found that taller people make more money, are more likely to be promoted, and CEOs tend to be significantly taller than average. Men, in particular, often feel the pressure to be tall since masculinity is so often tied to height. Because of this, Alyssa Davis, a gender studies researcher, says, one reason why this surgery greatly appeals to men is because it “reaffirms their gender”.

One in ten young men aged 16-24 said they had considered getting leg-lengthening surgery, according to a recent study by Better. With warped ideas of masculinity and dangerous body-mod discussions taking place all over the internet, not just on looksmaxxing forums, the problem and the apparent “solution” is spoon fed to young men. Harry, like Ryan, expressed feeling an overwhelming sense of release after the surgery, categorically insisting that their psychological problems had been cured. However, cosmetic surgery is an individual solution and not one that fixes the underlying conditions that lead people to temporarily cripple their legs in order to feel better about their bodies. It’s these conditions and the pressures around body image that men are feeling, that need to be spoken about.

People think boys are fine with their body image but they’re not, and they haven’t been for a very long time – Mike Nicholson

Mike Nicholson, the founder of Progressive Masculinity and a former teacher, works with schoolboys in the UK, running workshops to help them communicate their anxieties. He argues that body pressure in young men is massively overlooked, particularly in schools. “People think boys are fine with their body image but they’re not, and they haven’t been for a very long time,” he says. The solution, he believes, is to listen to them in a non-judgmental way. “Most of them don’t have an environment where they feel they’re not gonna be judged. You need to have these conversations in the real world, so they don’t gravitate towards the digital world where a lot of the issues are.”

While Ryan and Harry do seem happier, even they’d admit it would be better if they had been able to love themselves and feel accepted at their natural height. Like with all discussions around beauty standards and decisions around getting cosmetic work done, it’s hard to know how much responsibility each individual has. Do these people bear the full weight of righting the wrongs of the patriarchal conceptions around masculinity by not undergoing this surgery, however gruesome and intense it may be? Or is this an out, an escape to the pressures that these men have carried their whole life, and unfair to blame them for an opportunity to feel “normal”?

Dr Pritchard identifies this hate-the-game-not-the-player dilemma: “I can’t blame a person for doing it, but instead of changing these people, why don’t we just be more accepting as society and change those representations, those attitudes? But of course, that’s more difficult. It’s easier to change the person.”

*Ryan and Harry asked to remain anonymous and these are not their real names.