Tempest in a C-Cup
The narrow debate between silicone breast implant makers and the Food and Drug Administration over safety is all about silicone leakage, granulomas, the cushy hand-feel of silicone versus a bag of salt water, and so on. What’s missing are the broader cultural questions, such as why a 17-year-old girl asks her parents for breast implants for a high school graduation gift. Or why a Hollywood starlet whose ribs stick out and whose knees look like baseballs walks around with two big, perfectly round protrusions from her bony chest.
Obviously, the craze for all things natural, from cotton clothing to farmers’ market produce to gardens filled with California native plants, hasn’t made it to women’s bodies. Or to men’s bodies, to be fair, judging by all the steroid controversies and hair implants.
Still, it’s women who feel the strongest cultural pressures. On ABC’s reality plastic surgery show “Extreme Makeover” (fix your life with knife!), a woman may come in worrying about buck teeth but in the end will usually say, “And while you’re at it, do the breasts.” Plastic surgeons soberly discuss what size makes a patient feel beautiful yet stops short of emulating 1960s stripper and silicone pioneer Carol Doda (a small C-cup seems to be the answer).
The very employability of actresses, models, even in some cases corporate middle managers, may depend on some “freshening.” For others, it looks like a fast track in the husband sweepstakes.
Plastic surgery, like much of American pop culture, is being globalized. Argentina and Thailand offer attractive sightseeing-and-scalpel vacations. There may be little use in trying to restrict breast implants, but how about a sterner warning for what’s become so casual a surgery?
The FDA could insist on a big (enlarged letters) sign on the surgeon’s office door, akin to those warnings it attaches to ads for antidepressants or painkillers: “Breast enhancement may impede breast-feeding. May desensitize nipples. May cause scarring or encapsulation that requires further surgery. May slip to another part of the body or leak. Requires anesthesia and pain.”
Surgeons already have to tell most or all of this to patients, but that’s after those patients have been tantalized by before-and-after photos.
Much like the government and litigation proceeds have helped fund anti-smoking campaigns, policymakers could also focus on ways of encouraging anti-implant campaigns, maybe even by subsidizing public service campaigns on the benefits of a really good push-up bra. Something you can take off if it’s uncomfortable or torn, has no surgical risk and costs less than a great meal.
