Plastic surgeons this week raised red flags about a penis whitening fad in Thailand, dismissing the procedure as a phallic “fashion” with uncertain benefits and many risks.
Requiring the use of lasers, acid or chemicals, the latest craze in genital beautification can leave men with burns, scars, taut skin or the exact opposite of what they were after in the first place — a darker penis or a spotted one, experts said.
“I think it should not be done in a patient that doesn’t need it,” said Milanese plastic surgeon Massimiliano Brambilla, who specializes in genital procedures. “Most of the substances that are used to whiten ... are quite aggressive. Whitening is one of those things that I am very careful of.”
Earlier this month, a Bangkok clinic said 100 men a month were making use of its penis whitening service just six months after it started offering the procedure. The clinic charged about US$650 for five laser sessions.
According to global statistics produced by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), Thailand ranked 21st in terms of the number of cosmetic procedures performed in 2016. The data also showed a massive rise in genital beautification procedures globally.
Labiaplasty, which involves trimming the inner vaginal “lips” or labia minoria, was in 2016 by far the fastest growing surgery sector, with a 45 percent rise from 2015, the ISAPS said.
Genital whitening was not listed among the data, but industry experts say demand is growing.
“I think it’s linked to the pornographization of society,” said plastic surgeon Fabien Boucher from Lyon, France.
“What people see is ... a genital aesthetic that in my view is not realistic,” with sex organs shaved and otherwise manipulated to represent those of very young people — hairless, smooth and pink, he said.
It is normal for the privates to be more darkly colored than the rest of the skin, Boucher said.
“I do sex-change surgeries, constructing penises for female-to-male transformations, and these patients want exactly the opposite” of genital whitening — many opting for color-in tattoos, he added.
“A key defect of our penile reconstruction procedure is that we end up with white penises which are visibly not natural,” he said.
Another reason for the Thai trend is cultural. The Asia-Pacific region is a major market for skin lighteners.
Boucher said there has been little scientific research into the use of lasers and chemicals for penis-whitening, and no bleaching techniques or products have been developed uniquely for use in this sensitive area.
“The skin of the penis is different” to that of the face or body, for which the existing products were conceived, Boucher said. “It is a thin skin ... and we do not yet fully understand how it will react.”
The Thai Ministry of Public Health has also warned against the procedure, saying it might cause irritation or infection, and even presents a threat to sexual pleasure and reproduction.
“Honestly, I don’t think they should be doing it,” said Boucher, who said he would not perform the procedure until the science shows it is safe.
Brambilla said he has turned down about three whitening requests in his 15-year career.
“If the color is uniform, I really see no need, but even if there is a reason for intervention, such as an accident, the instruments that we have now to do it, they cannot guarantee first of all the satisfaction, secondly a realistic result and thirdly the safety of what you’re doing,” he said.
Meanwhile, penis enlargement in 2016 dropped by 28 percent, according to the ISAPS, likely due to the rise of new, less-invasive booster techniques.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.