As Movember has proved, not all mustaches are the bushy stuff of legend. That's apparently a bit of a problem in the Middle East, where the facial hair signifies both wisdom and virility, and it's leading more and more men to undergo mustache surgery. Seriously. CNN reports that mustache implants are on the rise among men in the region, with one Turkish plastic surgeon reporting that he now performs as many as 60 such procedures a month.
A Paris-based surgeon tells a similar tale, saying most of his patients hail from Mideast countries like Iran, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates; are between the ages of 30 and 50; and pay about $7,000 for the implant, in which hairs are extracted from dense areas of growth and implanted above the upper lip. CNN delves more into the history of the mustache in that part of the world: It reports that it's been popular there since Ottoman times, and notes that the US consul in Algiers in 1795 explained his new mustache in a letter to his wife, saying it had aided him in his work and gave him "the air of a tiger." Click for more. (More mustache stories.)
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