Communications of the ACM
Tech Workers Paying to Get Taller
Dr. Kevin Debiparshad points out the amount by which he was able to lengthen a patient's legs by severing the femur and inserting a titanium nail through the broken bone.
Credit: Roger Kisby / Redux Pictures
A growing number of men are undergoing a radical and expensive surgery to grow anywhere from three to six inches. Some are tech bros. "I joke that I could open a tech company," says Dr. Kevin Debiparshad, one of only a handful of surgeons in North America who perform cosmetic leg lengthening.
The process involves having both femurs broken. Most patients fork over from $70,000 to $150,000, depending on how many inches they want to gain. LimbplastX Institute, which Dr. Debiparshad founded in Las Vegas in 2016, sees about 50 new people a month. Most are aflluent: physicians, finance guys, actors, CEOs.
And tech bros. "I got, like, 20 software engineers doing this procedure right now who are here in Vegas," Dr. Debiparshad says. "There was a girl" — because girls can be tech bros too — "yesterday from PayPal. I've got patients from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. I've had multiple patients from Microsoft."
"I'm not changing who you are," Dr. Debiparshad says. "You're still who you are. This is just one [thing] that you want to change about yourself."
From GQ
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