London:
Men's "boob operations" to reduce their size have rocketed across Britain by more than 1,000 per cent in five years, latest figures from the plastic surgery industry suggests.
Elderly and middle-aged Britons who never dared to show their naked torso in public are now shaking off decades of shame and getting the problem cut out, according to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS).
Surgeons are increasingly being sought by once shy men to have their embarrassing 'moobs' (men's boobs) reduced, the BAAPS annual conference in Cardiff was told this week.
BAAPS is a not-for-profit organisation, and is the only such group in the country which issues its figures, which suggests that the real level of operations could be three times higher, or even more.
The group revealed that from a very low level of just 22 man boob reduction operations among its members in 2003, the total had jumped to 323 in 2008.
"I get people coming to me in their 50s and 60s. Men who have never taken their T-shirts off in public before," Douglas McGeorge, former president of BAAPS, told The Independent.
McGeorge, a plastic surgeon with his own practice, said teenage boys were also having the operation.
"In puberty, there is a mixture of hormones and some young men develop breasts which can go of their own accord later in life," he explained.