Nip and Tuck Gets Its Own Magazine

In an age when breast implants are supplanting new cars as high school graduation gifts for thousands of teenage girls, it was perhaps inevitable.

The growing ranks of Americans unwilling to plod through life with puffy eyelids, an outsized nose or sagging derriere now have a bible of their own: New Beauty, a magazine touted as a pocket guide to "cosmetic enhancement".

The launch this month of the first glossy magazine devoted entirely to plastic surgery is a milestone in America's growing fascination with surgical body sculpting.

Its publishers, Sandow Media of Boca Raton, Florida, say they are responding to a shortage of reliable information about surgery and other procedures for which there is a nearly insatiable demand.

Nearly 9m cosmetic procedures were performed in America in 2003 - a 33% rise on the year before, the publishers say.

An initial circulation run of 500,000 is planned, with a cover price of $9.95 (about £5.30), for what is envisaged as a quarterly publication. About 20% of the copies will be distributed free at health clubs and beauty salons.

The magazine says it will advise readers how to choose a doctor, and what different procedures involve. Material will be checked by a panel of cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists.

The 250-page debut issue covers eyelifts, liposuction, laser treatments and teeth whitening, as well as breast enhancement.

The publisher has said that the magazine is aimed not just at the middle-aged and wealthy, but at "the 22-year-old receptionist who will spend whatever it takes".

Lower prices have expanded the market from wealthy dowagers to ambitious male business executives and teenage girls - often going under the knife with their baby boomer mothers.

Between 2002 and 2003, the number of girls under the age of 18 who had breast implants nearly tripled, from 3,872 to 11,326.