Hair transplants: Pakistan’s new weapon of mass seduction

In Pakistan, hair is synonymous with virility to the point that even some Taliban fighters are buying ointments to give their long locks and beards a lustrous finish. Roads are filled with giant billboards of celebrities once bald but now all smiles, thanks to the country’s hair transplant facilities — sign of a blooming cottage industry that has reinforced the virtues of manhood in a region where bald men are given the derogatory term “ganjas”. Hair transplants have been around in the area since 2000, but only took off seven years later, when Nawaz Sharif, who was balding when he was deposed as prime minister by General Pervez Musharraf eight years earlier, returned from exile with a full head of hair.

A doctor tried to convince the man that ‘you don’t grow beard because this is the beard given to you by God’. And he said ‘No, I want to have this like Mohammed, peace be upon him.’ So we went ahead and six months later he had a very big beard and he was very happy.

Dr. Fawad Aamir, hair restoration specialist, who saw a Taliban commander’s son with a desire to make his patchy beard fuller

Today, there are nearly 120 hair transplant clinics in Pakistan, according to official figures, with a dozen in Peshawar. The operation generally costs from $400 to $1,000, with some top clinics charging up to $6,000 — a fraction of what it costs in the West, but still well out of reach for most Pakistanis. Many clients come from abroad, in particular the Pakistani-Afghan diaspora who come to see their friends and family — and return more hirsute. Hair is so important, locals say, that it even makes or breaks marriages.

One of my clients had lost a lot of hair and two or three marriage proposals did not mature. After (the procedure), she came to give me the invitation to her wedding. That day, she had tears in her eyes. She said, ‘You are the person who has made my life’.

A hair transplant doctor who received a female patient

Odd News