Under the Veil, Nip and Tuck Makes New Saudi Faces

Asharq Alawsat, March 8, 2009

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, (AP) — Does Islam frown on nose jobs? Chemical peels? How about breast implants?

One of the clerics with the answers is Sheik Mohammed al-Nujaimi, and Saudi women flock to him for guidance about going under the knife. The results may not see much light of day in a kingdom where women cover up from head to toe, yet cosmetic surgery is booming.

Religion covers every facet of life in Saudi Arabia, including plastic surgery. Al-Nujaimi draws his guidelines from the consensus that was reached three years ago when clergymen and plastic surgeons met in Riyadh to determine whether cosmetic procedures violate the Islamic tenet against tampering God’s creation.

The verdict was that it’s halal (sanctioned) to augment unusually small breasts, fix features that are causing a person grief, or reverse damage from an accident. But undergoing an unsafe procedure or changing the shape of a “perfect nose” just to resemble a singer or actress is haram (forbidden).

“I get calls from many, many women asking about cosmetic procedures,” said al-Nujaimi told The Associated Press in an interview. “The presentations we got from the doctors made me better equipped to give them guidance.”

In recent years, plastic surgery centers with gleaming facades have sprung up on streets in Riyadh, the capital. Their front-page newspaper ads promise laser treatments, hair implants and liposuction.

From rarities only 10 years ago, the centers now number 35 and are “saturating the Saudi market,” Ahmed al-Otaibi, a Saudi skin specialist, was quoted as saying in the Al-Hayat newspaper.

Al-Otaibi cited a study according to which liposuction, breast augmentations and nose jobs are the most popular among women, while men go for hair implants and nose jobs.

Saudi women see nothing unusual about undergoing plastic surgery and then covering it up in robes and veils.

Sarah, an unmarried, 28-year-old professional woman, pointed out in an interview that underneath their robes, women go in for designer clothes and trendy haircuts to be flaunted at women’s gatherings, shown to their husbands and exposed on trips abroad.

“We attend a lot of private occasions, and we also travel,” said Sarah, who declined to give her full name to protect her privacy.

She said she is contemplating having 22 surgeries, including a breast lift, padding her rear and reversing her down-turned lips into a smile.

She also wants the lips of Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe, and less flare to her nostrils, though so far her plastic surgeon has refused to do the nose because he doesn’t think it needs altering.

Ayman al-Sheikh, a Saudi doctor who spent almost 14 years in the U.S., most of them at Harvard, said demand in Saudi Arabia is in line with increased global demand. But what he sees more of in the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, is a customers for procedures that enhance the face to the point where it no longer looks natural.

The trend is being set by entertainers whose pouty lips, chiseled midriffs and enhanced breasts are seen on TV across the Arab world.

Not all customers seek religious sanction, and not all surgeons abide by the clerics’ guidelines, so a woman is apt to pick a surgeon depending on how liberal he is.

“People are overdone by design or by mistake,” al-Sheikh, 43, told the AP. “If something is done on a famous figure it becomes iconic in our world even if it doesn’t look esthetically appealing.”

He said when he returned to the kingdom four years ago, patients initially came with requests for one performer’s nose or another’s cheeks, but that stopped after word spread he was a conservative who believes “every face has its own features.”

The boom in surgery prompted Saudi columnist Abdoo Khal to write a piece titled, “We don’t want you to be Cinderella.”

“Women’s rush to undergo plastic surgery is an obsession resulting from a woman’s insecurity,” he wrote, “and it consolidates the idea that women are for bed only.”