Are you a male urban freelancer/professional with $7,000 to burn, an endless capacity for dressing hiply, and an inability to grow a proper, manly beard? Stop your fretting!

Plastic surgeons are now taking patches of hair from mens' heads and transplanting them on their faces in a growing craze of artificial beard generation, as DNA Info reports. It's unclear how one keeps from then having weird bald spots on one's head, especially if shooting for a full-on lumberjack beard.

The hair for beard transplants typically is taken from the patient's head — roots and all — and then planted through micro-incisions on a bare patch of face, in an eight-hour procedure under local anesthesia, similar to how hair transplants are done, doctors said.

The procedure ranges in price from $3,000 for fill-ins of beard sections to $7,000 for a full beard, doctors said.

While doctors prefer head hair, on rare occasions patients who are balding might be able to use hair from the chest for the surgery, doctors said.

So, sure, if you already are spending $4,000 on rent and have no interest in authenticity or resigning yourself to nature's limits, go for it! What could possibly go wrong?

I found at least one doctor in San Jose who does this stuff, but no doubt there are more in the city. They'll probably be leaving their names and numbers in the comments, in fact.

[DNA Info]
[NY Mag]