Cosmetic Leg Lengthening

Source of photos and quotations: Richard Jones, "The Height of Vanity," Marie Claire <ca. May, 2003>. Thanks to Brian Peganoff for providing me with this article.

Today it is possible to increase height by lengthening the leg bones. The procedure is costly, painful, and not without risk of complication, but it usually adds a few inches, as in the example shown at left. Some men undergo the procedure, but it is much more common among women.

How is such "growth" possible? For one thing, a great deal of violence in the form of sawing, hammering, and stretching is needed. The leg bone, for example, is sawn in half below the knee and a metal apparatus of levers and nails forced the bone apart and then holds it there until it heals and regenerates. Great care has to be taken to insure that both legs are lengthened to the same degree--sometimes the operation is botched in this respect. Several rounds of surgery are required, accompanied by long stays in a hospital and a total recovery period of a year or more. The average cost in dollars is about $10,000 (compare with the average Chinese household incline: $4300).

And why do women (and some men) undergo such expense and suffering? For beauty and all the things beauty can "buy:"

For Chinese women, the pressure to be tall invades all aspects of life. Chinese society equates height with beauty and power. Many image-driven companies place height requirements on hiring; so do entire branches of the Chinese government (The Foreign Ministry, for example, required would-be female diplomats to be at least 5'3"; males 5'7"). This bias is even more striking socially: Personal ads in the newspapers often include minimum heights. (p. 94)

Descriptions of the pain of the operation and its aftermath often bear a close resemblance to descriptions of footbinding:

Miao has spent more than six months in the hospital so far. She used to be just over five feet tall and has thus far been stretched to 5'3", growth she confesses was achieved through a lot of agony. "The pain is very hard to take," she says rubbing her legs. "It was unbearable at the beginning. And now, as my legs have stretched, the pain has come back. I rarely sleep more than two hours at a time." (p. 96)

And, just as footbinding was (and is) a taboo subject and rarely discussed, leg lengthening is typically done in secret. Often the only other person in the know is a young woman's mother. Miao's mother, for example:

is fully complicit in her subterfuge [covering up her operation]. "This is our secret," she says. "We're not going to advertise it. It will help with her future. We will be able to pay back the money when she gets a better job. She's very clever and this will make all the difference." (p. 98)

The small details always change, but basic human behavior seems to hold constant over the centuries. And if you are tempted to write this practice off as a peculiarly Chinese oddity, you probably should not. For one thing, cosmetic leg lengthening is catching on in other countries. And if it isn't leg lengthening, it is something else. In an inset box in the article by Jones cited above, Sejal Patel reports on "designer vaginas" in the United States. For only $3,000-$6,000:

Women embarrassed or made uncomfortable by large, long, or uneven labia are turning to "labiaplasty" to reshape them. Most plastic surgeons simply snip off excess, though Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Gary Alter. M.D., has developed a procedure in which  he removes an area from within the labia so the natural edge remains. For those seeking heightened sensation, "clitoroplasty" removes the clitoral hood, promising to increase sensitivity during sex. (p. 98)

For more on leg lengthening in China, see:

"Chinese Stretch to Catch up with Teenage Model"

"High Hopes"

"Latest Surgery Craze Sounds Like a Tall Tale"

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