Speaking of Implants : TV’s Jenny Jones Goes Public With Traumatic Tale

It sounds like the ideal audience-grabber for TV’s February ratings sweeps: A talk-show host reveals a personal medical problem that’s tinged with sex and corresponds to a hot news topic.

But Jenny Jones, who will discuss her traumatic 11 years with cosmetic silicone breast implants on her first-year show this week, says the decision to come forward was based on altruism, not commercialism.

“I want something good to come out of this, and if it’s to be the spokesperson against breast implants, then I will,” she said in a phone interview from Chicago, where the syndicated “Jenny Jones” is taped. “My intent is to stop women from ever having them.”

Jones, a comedian who gained notice for her 1989-1991 women-only “Girls’ Night Out” act, where she tackled dicey-but-amusing “female troubles,” said she got the implants because she had always been self-conscious about her breast size.

She has had nothing but complications since, she said, and has undergone six operations and five types of implants--all unsuccessful--to correct results that look far worse than she ever did before.

Now Jones plans to tape a show about the subject Tuesday. It is scheduled to air locally Thursday at 2 p.m. on KNBC Channel 4.

After years of indecision, Jones decided a few weeks ago to share her history with the public, becoming the first celebrity to come forward since the implants became front-page news.

“It really had to do with the Dow Corning announcements,” she said, referring to the revelation last month that the manufacturer--which did not produce any of Jones’ implants--had known for years of health questions about its devices.

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration recommended last Thursday that the controversial implants--which can rupture, leaking silicone gel into the body--be severely restricted for cosmetic use while scientists study the tentative link between the gel and certain diseases and cancers.

Jones, 45, discovered in December that she has such leakage in her tissues, and says her decision to speak out coincides with her own worries that the substance will somehow damage her health. So far she has had no medical problems associated with the implants.

But even before the medical controversy, Jones’ harrowing experiences with implants would give anyone second thoughts about the procedure. Since her first operation in 1981 by a non-board certified surgeon in Beverly Hills, she said, she has suffered common but damaging side-effects to the procedure, including a complete, permanent hardening of her breasts caused by scar tissue around the implants.

In subsequent operations, the doctor tried experimenting with other implants to counteract the hardness, but “I think this body just didn’t want to accept a foreign substance,” Jones said.

Her breasts are now lopsided, with scars around both nipples and a ridge of silicone in her right breast. Her breasts are completely numb.

“I hate my breasts right now,” she said. “But the sad part is that you can’t undo this.”

Doctors have told Jones it would be impossible to remove all the leaked silicone gel, and they would have to take some of Jones’ own tissue along with what they could remove. And although she wants to have the implants taken out, the process would be disfiguring.

“I went from a 34A to a 36C, and I’ve had the implants for 10 years. What do you do with all the extra skin?” she said. “All the options are bad--it’s just a question of the least bad.”

She is still undecided about what her next move will be, but hopes the answers to her medical dilemma “will come during the process” of speaking out.

“The embarrassment is the worst part,” she said. “It involves your sexuality and how you’re perceived. I am sure people will look at me in a different way, but that’s worth it to me.”

On her TV show this week, Jones plans to answer audience questions about her ordeal and to tackle some of the body-image issues that led her--and other women--to seek such surgery in the first place.

Her guests will include a psychologist, an anti-implant activist and a woman doctor who supports the devices. “I’m trying to be as impartial as possible--though there is only one side as far as I’m concerned.”

She added that she’s not against all cosmetic surgery--she had a nose job 20 years ago--just against “implanting things in the body that God didn’t intend us to.”

After years of silent humiliation, Jones said, she does not fear her name being irrevocably linked to breast implants the way Magic Johnson’s is to AIDS or Betty Ford’s is to alcoholism.

“I’m finally free of this,” she explained, “and I don’t have to worry if somebody’s going to expose me. I can have surgery under my own name now. I can get a prescription in my own name. It really feels good.”

Both Jones and David Salzman, executive producer of “Jenny Jones,” said that the “just-in-time-for-sweeps” aspect of her revelation never entered their minds. (“Jenny Jones” is averaging a 2 Nielsen rating nationwide so far this season, compared to 5.6 for “Sally Jessy Raphael,” 7 for “Donahue” and 10.7 for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and has not yet been given the go-ahead for a second season.)

In fact, said Salzman, he was unaware when the show was first planned that Jones even had breast implants.

“We decided in December that we were going to do a special episode around the time of the FDA hearings,” he said. “Then just before Christmas, Jenny told me she had a personal health situation on her mind that she wanted to talk to me about. Three times we started conversations and she just couldn’t bring herself to tell me.”

When she finally did a few weeks ago, she was still unsure whether to go public. “She said, ‘I don’t want to turn this into a media circus,’ ” Salzman recalled.

Jones said that the relief she feels now was worth the pain of coming forward, and she hopes she won’t be the only “name” to speak out against breast augmentation surgery.

“I know at least one other celebrity that has had (implant) problems,” she said. “We are the ones who set trends, and we can make it a trend to get this out in the open.”