Big Trouble in Little Hooterville

The story was at the bottom of the page the other day in the Health section, which I think constitutes an error in editorial judgment.

Any time you’ve got a headline that says, “Breast Enhancement in the Privacy of Your Own Home,” and a photo of a smiling woman holding a double-cone vacuum suction device 6 inches from her chest, it ought to knock something off the front page.

I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but has anyone considered the ramifications of nonsurgical breast enlargement on the Southern California economy?

The power crisis is nothing compared to what this might do. Hundreds of plastic surgeons could end up selling oranges on the streets. Luxury automobile dealerships could tank. Newspapers held afloat by plastic surgery ads could sink.

All because of a device called Brava, which was created by a Miami physician and sells for $2,500. That’s a third the cost of surgical augmentation.

The Brava, as pictured in the story, might well have caused the male half of The Times’ 1 million or so readers to spit coffee on themselves. The two plastic domes are so large, you could fit a baby manatee in each.

But as it turns out, that’s not the size of the eventual breasts. The average gain is less than a full cup size, as the creator, Dr. Roger Khouri, explained to me by phone.

The way it works is that you strap on the Brava, which is held in place with a sports bra the size of a pup tent, and then you flip a switch the way you would on a vacuum cleaner.

And here’s the truly amazing part.

You have to wear this contraption 10 hours a day for 10 weeks, and an alarm sounds if you move the wrong way and break the vacuum seal.

So let’s say you’re at dinner on a first date, a waiter accidentally backs into you, and the Brava siren wails. Not only is this an awkward moment for the woman, but the unsuspecting date might hit the deck, thinking a missile attack is underway.

Further, with a broken seal on one of these Tupperware helmets, there’s a chance of having appetizers Hoovered up off the table and attaching like refrigerator magnets to your chest.

And yet doctors see a huge future for Brava.

“I think it’s going to bring us even more business,” said Santa Monica plastic surgeon Steve Teitelbaum, who fits women for the Brava and allayed my fears about the imminent collapse of the L.A. economy. “The majority of women who come to us want to go bigger than the Brava can do.”

So there’ll still be roughly 200,000 surgical augmentations annually in the United States, which likes everything super-size and seems to grow more sophisticated with each passing year.

But there could be an additional, even larger market for Brava. An estimated 16 million women are unhappy with their breast size, but unwilling to go under the knife to augment their self-esteem.

I don’t expect to ever understand the opposite sex in my lifetime. But one woman, whose identity must be withheld, would toss my shorts into the street in about two seconds if I suggested she place her privates into suction domes for roughly 10 hours a day through mid-September.

First of all, she doesn’t like to vacuum anything. Second, she would say something about women trying to make themselves look like beer commercial bimbos for “idiot men.”

Have they thought about strapping that thing to their heads? she’d ask.

Dr. Khouri, creator of Brava, actually liked the idea.

“Smart women tell me that’s the most important sex organ,” he said. “We could call it Brainva.”

It’s a good thing the anonymous woman didn’t see the ad that ran near the Brava story. It was from a surgeon looking for “Buttock Enhancement” patients.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that women were trying to lose weight back there?

And how about the noble work of the surgeon? Children are dying in mosquito-infested villages without doctors, and this guy’s doing butt surgery on Jennifer Lopez wannabes.

Look, I’ve got no clinical background. But if I understand the basic principle behind Brava, I don’t see why you couldn’t put it to work on the back 40.

In fact, I don’t see why it can’t come with different attachments, like a Kirby or a Eureka. Maybe they could even throw in a Bravo adapter, for the man who’s got almost everything.

Not that I know a single guy who’d be interested.

Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com