As the Opera North is preparing to enact Armando Iannucci's satirical operetta, “Skin Deep,” whose purpose is to illustrate mankind’s obsession with beauty and what are regarded as standards of beauty women must abide by, a recent survey, commissioned precisely in anticipation of the opening night, reveals that British husbands would gladly say yes to plastic surgery. Of course, only 25 percent of the 2,000 respondents would go under the knife themselves, but they would happily send their wives for a bit of retouching, The Daily Mail reports.

The conclusion of the survey is telling of how, no matter how much our society has become accustomed to criticizing surgical interventions when they are being undertaken for beautification purposes, plastic surgery is still seen as the solution to all evils. Thus, the first on the gentlemen’s list of things that their wives might consider changing about their looks was the tummy, with 37 percent voting for a tuck as the most “desirable enhancement.”

Next up came liposuction on legs, with 25 percent, breast enlargement, with a surprisingly small 22 percent, uplift/reduction on the same area, with 19 percent, and liposuction on arms, with 18 percent. Not at all surprisingly, rear implants placed last, with just 6 percent of the men saying that their wives would ever need a larger posterior.

Overall, most men interviewed for the survey said that their spouses getting some work done was actually the only thing that could either spice up or even save the marriage. Thus, while only 16 percent of men confessed to their wives needing a nip here and a tuck there (and an even less 6 percent believed that the women in their lives needed “a complete overhaul”), well above 75 percent of all bluntly admitted that plastic surgery on the wife would be the only thing that could still make married life work for them.

On the bright side, of all the 2,000 men queried, some 81 percent admitted that a woman’s body was by far more tried and had more to endure than a man’s. At the same time, 36 percent openly confessed that they would never tell all that to their spouses, for fear they might be offended, while 17 percent claimed they would try to approach them on the subject as a result of taking part in the survey.

“Plastic surgery is so much more on people's radars and the survey shows a lot of men do actually see it as a viable option to spruce up their wives. These findings are very amusing.” a spokesman for Opera North told The Daily Mail, upon going public with the results.