EEEEEEK!!! Please note that the discussion on this thread has pushed me into a more centrist position! I’m trying to be more open-minded and I’m not going to be drawn into the defense of a position I held two days ago.
However, I still oppose women getting implants to get or keep a boyfriend. Blue Twilight’s friend is a case in point.
OTOH, boob jobs as a business decision make some sense, as long as a full cost/benefit analysis is performed beforehand by a neutral party who can properly gauge the dancer’s career potential.
Originally posted by Lucky:
Certainly a woman can live a full life with only one breast. Why do you allow for reconstructive surgury but find implants inappropriate?
This question was directed at Dropzone but I thought I’d wade in anyway.
I believe there is a world of difference between people’s reasons for reconstructive surgery vs. cosmetic surgery. How can you compare a woman who merely wants to look the way she did before being ravaged by cancer to a perfectly healthy woman’s choice to buy bigger breasts? In both cases both women walk away happier (ideally), but I think it’s spurious to compare a unhappily small-breasted woman to a one-breasted cancer survivor.
An equally unfair comparison would be between Matthew Perry and a man whose nose was ripped off in an accident. Yes, both men will feel better about their appearance after surgery, but can you fairly compare the men’s reasons for undergoing surgery? AccidentGuy might never have thought twice about his nose until the day it was torn from his face.
Okay, where’s my flame-retardant jacket? <nervous chuckle>
No flame, Cajo. And to be honest, I feel the difference between the two situations, but can’t logically see any difference. In both cases it’s a matter of improving one’s appearance (if even in the persons own mind alone). So what is the difference if the offending breasts or nose or what have you is the result of accident, disease or birth?
People have been seeking ways to improve on nature for ages, ranging from codpieces for men (an often unrealistically large fake penis shoved down the front of tight pants), to tight corsets for women designed to exaggerate the hips and bust. Later, came bras designed to make the bust look higher and firmer, along with hip padding, butt padding and shoulder padding.
Wigs have been around for years and then the clothing industry got into the act with designs to enhance the human form. Tapered shirts for men, padding in the shoulders of coats, lower waist to crotch length in pants to not exaggerate the stomach (remember Fred in I Love Lucy? His trousers came nearly up to his armpits at times). Men’s briefs with a wider than normal elastic band to hold in the ‘paunch’ and make the wearer look slimmer, ‘support bands’ in panty hose for the same reason in women, and ‘high heels’ designed to change the look of a woman’s calves to make them look slim and sexy. (Prior to high heels, old pictures show many women wearing hard, heavy shoes and having some pretty muscular looking legs.)
Besides, more men are going after liposuction to get rid of that stubborn pot most develop after 30, and I read where guys have gone in to have fat removed from under their breasts to give them a better look and a few have had implants to give them ‘pecks’. Hemorrhoid cream is being used by some guys to shrink wrinkles on their faces. In Japan – always a great place to find goofy stuff – men were wearing makeup not so long ago.
Now, if anyone discovers a safe way to increase penis size without getting plastic implants, like the pump, the guys will probably trample over the ladies in their efforts to get to the surgeon.
Lucky asked:
So what is the difference if the offending breasts or nose or what have you is the result of accident, disease or birth?
The major difference is that a perfectly healthy person unhappy with their body is “fixing” what they (or society, or their asshole boyfriend) feels is not good enough. A person undergoing surgery to look the way they did before cancer/car accident is trying to fix what was broken. I see a world of difference between “I wish I had larger breasts” and “I wish I still had both breasts.”
If you put a picture of me on Internet and solicit opinions on how to make me “better-looking”, no doubt you’ll get many: liposuction for the thighs, implants for the chest, a nose job etc. yet under normal circumstances I would never, ever pay someone to surgically alter my appearance. I’m not perfect but I’m quite happy with what I have; everything works and though I’m not Tyra Banks I don’t care because that job is already taken.
This would change if one day a doctor had to chop off a piece of me to save my life. Like I said, I already like the way I look, and the way I look would have been altered by cancer. If I lose my hair to chemo I’ll wear a wig that looks like the hair I lost until my own grows back. If I lose a breast to cancer I’ll get an implant to make me look the way did before I got ill, rather than walking around with one breast and a scar. This would be my attempt at regaining normalcy, not keeping up current breast fashion.
The above scenario is worlds away from, say, a stripper saying, “Y’know, people would pay a lot more to see me shake my thang if I had more thang to shake.”
If paying a surgeon to change your appearance makes you happy (and you aren’t merely masking an underlying emotional/self-esteem problem) I say more power to you. But any flat-chested woman who dares to compare herself (or her appearance or her reasons for plastic surgery) to those of a cancer survivor or an accident victim is kidding herself. An “A” cup is not the same as a missing breast!
I should have added that I don’t pay to get in. I get in for free because i watch my friend, she brings me along sometimes. And she gives me $20 in one-dollar bills so I can throw them at her. We think it’s fun because it’s her own money we are throwing at her. And the people who work there pretty much know me as “Marie’s friend” and they don’t think I’m gay or weird for watching her and tossing dollars. Marie likes me there because she feels supported and it gets tiring for men to hoot at her all the time (even though her breasts are practically non-existent).
I have changed my mind. I think plastic surgery is wonderful and necessary if you think your nose is too bumpy or your chest is too flat.
Me, I just want an extra eye put in my forehead and bat wings growing out of my back.
Jumping in late, but I was in on a previous cosmetic surgery thread and can’t resist my $.02
Of course, depending on etiology, one could look at both as an accident of genes, and with one merely expressing itself later than the other. Why must one have a disease or horrible mishap before one is “allowed” to make surgical changes in one’s appearance? You speak of “regaining normalcy”, and I posit that this is exactly what many people who undergo cosmetic surgery are doing - having surgery that allows them to feel normal about how they look. And “normalcy” can certainly be subjective. Do we judge “normal” by external characteristics or by how one views oneself? If by some freak of nature, a woman grew two vastly different sized breasts (they’re never the same size IRL), one practically nonexistant, would she just have to suck it up, while a mastectomy patient would be “allowed” to have reconstructive surgery because her asymmetry was a result of a disease as opposed to being born that way? If the breast cancer survivor’s cancer was due to a breast cancer gene, they can both be viewed as having been “born that way”. Do you see how it all boils down to value judgements, and that comparing the two, while seemingly callous from one perspective, is not an outrageous stretch?
The problem with this is that others often take it upon themselves to judge whether someone is “masking an underlying emotional/self-esteem problem”. Sheeesh. Let people do what they want without having to carry the banner for their gender/race/ethnic group/society/whatever.
I’d be interested to know the honest response of those in the opposition camp to this hypothetical: A woman has large breasts, out of proportion to the rest of her body. They do not cause her physical discomfort (e.g. backaches). She just plain doesn’t like how her breasts look as part of the whole “her” - in fact, some might say she hates them. Is it “OK” for her to have reduction surgery simply for cosmetic reasons? I suspect there is a bit of a double standard around this - cosmetic enhancement=bad, cosmetic reduction=ok - but I could be wrong (some would say I quite frequently am )
Shaky Jake asked:
“Why must one have a disease or horrible mishap before one is ‘allowed’ to make surgical changes in one’s appearance?”
Good question – are you specifically asking me because you think that’s what I believe? If so, you’re wrong. That’s not what I believe at all. I merely believe there’s a difference between reconstructing a mangled face and a cosmetic nose job. I didn’t recoil from Matthew Perry before his surgery, but I might have done a “did I see what I thought I saw?”-double-take if he had two slits where a nose should be.
Shaky Jake:
“Do you see how it all boils down to value judgements, and that comparing the two, while seemingly callous from one perspective, is not an outrageous stretch?”
Of course it all boils down to value judgements. What I gave was my opinion (in response to Lucky’s question), not The Sermon On The Mount.
Shaky Jake:
“Let people do what they want without having to carry the banner for their gender/race/ethnic group/society/whatever.”
Well, duh. I happen to agree with a statement that obvious.
Like I said before, it’s totally up to a woman whether or not to surgically alter her body – hell, install air bags for all I care. If she’s done it for all the wrong reasons (peer pressure, poor self-esteem etc.), that’s sad; it she has changed one element about her body that she disliked and now feels happy (like Michi’s OP), that’s great. If Scary Spice wants me to view her breast enhancement in the same light as a cancer survivor’s breast replacement, however, I’ll have to decline. I still don’t see how two “A” or “B” cup breasts compare to restoring a surgically removed/deformed breast or giving the illusion of symmetry to a mismatched pair of breasts. Both women feel happier afterward, but there is a possibility that the cancer survivor might never have thought twice about buying breasts if hers hadn’t nearly killed her and been removed.
Oh God, I’m repeating myself.
There probably are flat-chested women who look in the mirror and view their chests with the same horror and shame my aunt did after her cancerous breast was removed; maybe they feel deformed and cheated, too. If so, that’s pretty tragic – on many levels. If, while sitting in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room, a flat-chested woman had the audacity to compare her “A” cups to my double-mastectomy I’d – I’d – man, I don’t know what I’d do.
Sometimes going from a double-A cup to a B cup is more than just about breasts-as-self-esteem.
I had a friend who got mild implants because she felt it was cheaper and easier in the long-run than having to have all her clothes altered to fit. Off-the-rack clothing is made to fit a B chest, and hangs loosely on women with less (and those of us with more have to upgrade a size, which hangs loosely in other ways, but I digress).
A double-mastectomy survivor I know said the same thing: it was easier to get implants than to replace all her favourite clothes (and she has a lot of gorgeous irreplaceable gowns).
So one can: pay tailors to alter clothing; buy really expensive designer clothing; make all one’s own clothing for the rest of one’s life or get implants.
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