What’s Up Front Is Not What Counts

I keep hearing about breast implants and I keep thinking: Why do women get them?

Why do 80% of the women who get them get them not for medical reasons but for reasons of beauty?

Why go to any risk--the risk of surgery, the risk of post-surgical problems--just for larger breasts?

Actually, I know the reason. I learned very directly 15 years ago.

The guy was a doctor, George J. Honiotes. He was on the staff of a respected hospital. He was board certified in both obstetrics and gynecology. He was also a medical hypnotist, and claimed that he had hypnotized women into having larger breasts.

“We did a study with 44 women, 28 of which finished the program,” Honiotes told me. “We took pictures before and after. We also measured. The 28 had increased their breast size anywhere from one-quarter of an inch to three and three-quarters inches. The average increase in breast size was two inches.”

Honiotes said the women, under hypnosis, were encouraged to concentrate on a positive and sensual self-image. They were also encouraged, through hypnotic suggestion, to rid themselves of any guilt they had about their breasts.

“The increase (in breast size) has been permanent,” Honiotes said. “We do have control over our bodies. Some believe that we have perfect minds and perfect bodies and that we let ourselves get sick. If that is true, then there are really no limits to what we can do.”

I clearly remember what happened the day that column appeared. The phone calls from readers numbered in the hundreds. And 99% of the calls were from people wanting to contact the doctor.

The most desperate calls were from the parents of teen-age girls. “We don’t know what to do anymore,” one father told me. “We are looking for any alternative to surgery.”

How old is your daughter? I asked.

“Fifteen,” he said.

Fifteen! Why don’t you just tell your daughter that at her age anything can still happen, I said. And, besides, it doesn’t matter how big her breasts are.

“Obviously you don’t have a teen-age daughter,” the father said dryly.

A few days ago, I tried to reach Honiotes. I got hold of his wife, who told me that while Honiotes still practices medicine, he no longer does breast-enlargement experiments.

“Doctor (her husband) decided to stop doing it,” Patricia Honiotes, who is a practicing hypnotist, said. “Though there was drastic improvement in some people, some people were looking for more. How do I say this tactfully? Some women were looking to go from a 32 to a 38G in two weeks. That’s why we don’t do it anymore.

“And Doctor didn’t want to seem ‘quacky.’ He didn’t want to make hypnosis seem ‘quacky.’ And there are just far more important things in the world than for a woman to get big boobs.”

I wish it were true. According to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, breast augmentations in 1990, the last year for which they have complete data, increased 25% over the year before and now amount to more than 89,000 surgeries per year.

Only 1% of these were for teen-age girls, I am happy to say. But that figure is low because parents are still (somewhat) in control of teen-agers, and some doctors won’t do such surgery because teen-age girls still are growing.

But in the 19-34 age group, when the girls and women are outside parental control, breast augmentation becomes the No. 1 procedure and represents 65% of all cosmetic surgeries.

Why?

The reason is obvious: Our culture relentlessly sells the benefits of big breasts. Women are taught at an early age that big breasts are the way to get success, happiness and, most of all, a man.

This week, Newsweek magazine interviewed women who have had breasts implants.

“Men are so superficial,” one woman said. “That’s what prompted me.”

Does anybody see a little irony here? Isn’t there a message for women here?

Yes, when it comes to breasts, men can be very superficial. So stop humoring us! Stop endangering your bodies by enlarging your breasts in order to get a man.

Because no man you get that way is a man worth getting.