By Bethan Cole
I remember distinctly the first time I saw a pair of surgically enhanced breasts with my own eyes.
It was around eight or nine years ago, in the changing rooms of the gym where a friend had taken me for a workout. I was getting undressed and there was another woman, a matter of a few metres away, topless, with oddly firm, projectile breasts pointing skywards.
My first reaction was shock. Two very weird, alien, unnatural body parts, brazenly displayed, right in front of me. They didn't look real or natural. They looked like what they were - breasts that had been bought. Not soft and slightly saggy, like a thirtysomething embonpoint should be, but plastic, hard-looking and aggressively perfect. They said robotic. They announced aspiration. They said "I'm considerably richer than you", and "I'm considerably more attractive than you", and even "Money well spent".
Continues Below ↓
| Stop worshipping dumb-assed celebrities who mutilate their breasts in the name of vanity |
For there was an unmistakeable air of conspicuous consumption in this woman's light golden tan and bizarrely pert orbs. I felt instantly sickened, and turned away.
I put it down to our surroundings, this was, after all, an overtly moneyed members' club. I told myself it was precisely these types of people - rich, successful, conventionally attractive - who had such things "done". This woman's fake, brown bosom seemed, at the time, to symbolise a jet-set lifestyle; a vulgar, ostentatious and knowing signifier of social status.
I didn't like what I'd seen, and would never have it done myself. But I'd always assumed men liked them. But that, perhaps, was where I went wrong.
A few years later, a boyfriend told me an apocryphal story about how the LA porn industry was importing Russian and Eastern European porn actresses with real breasts because the video directors in LA were fed up with the way their American counterparts' silicone breasts didn't move and bounce with the same sensual jiggle. I was still convinced that the average man would rather fondle a burgeoning cup that had been surgically enhanced than a modest A- or even B-sized pillow.
So it was with great relief that, this month, I read in GQ magazine an impassioned polemic, "Fear of fake breasts", by the novelist Tony Parsons. Fake breasts are "like plastic fruit" - good to look at, but not to touch, he writes.
"They are not there to be fondled, kissed or felt, they are there to be admired, discussed, lusted after and photographed. The moment they are touched - and I mean in the heat of passion, rather than out of curiosity or in the interests of scientific research - then the spell is broken. And this is true of all fake breasts, no matter how much money has been spent on this act of female self-mutilation." The scales fell from my eyes.
Men like women of all shapes and sizes. Some find small breasts sexy; others actively prefer "overweight" size 16s over "perfect" size 10s. The beach-ball sized, unapologetically false look insults both their taste and intelligence.
All of which begs the question: if they're so horrible and men don't really like them, why on earth are thousands of woman going under the knife? As Parsons says: "Why aren't there armies of thinking women protesting about the grotesquely booming trade in bogus breasts?"
Some women clearly do find breast enlargement procedures as needless as he does. "Breast surgery has become just another part of the beauty regime, like applying make-up, and it's unnecessary and unpleasant," says the writer Joan Smith, "It's treated the same as getting a haircut. It's become normalised. I think any woman considering breast surgery for cosmetic reasons should spend a month in Darfur and then decide if body image is a really important issue."
Surgically enhanced breasts - or at least images of them - are everywhere. From Katie Price to Pamela Anderson, with celebrity endorsement fake breasts have lost their shock value. Brigitte Nielsen even had her breast silicone drained live on television. This week, Keira Knightley made a stand against the tyranny of the unnatural bosom when she prevented the makers of The Duchess from "airbrushing" bigger cups on to her naturally flat chest. What happens in the world of celebrity now has ramifications for any young woman who opens a magazine or switches on the television.
Perhaps my greatest fear about the rise of the fake breast in Western culture is that, like Botox and facial surgery, it attempts to cheat ageing and mortality itself. Women want new breasts for a variety of reasons, but those in their 30s and 40s who have augmentations because their bosom was slightly sagging are attempting to turn back the clock.
Surely, like facial wrinkles, we need to learn to love the slight imperfections that ageing bestows. These are signs that our bodies have travelled and worked and experienced emotions - they are not scars or disfigurements.
If Parsons is paradigmatic, then men aren't half as critical of our bodies as women might imagine. And, while male approbation is the last reason women should avoid cosmetic procedures, we need to start loving ourselves a little more and stop worshipping dumb-assed celebrities who mutilate their breasts in the name of vanity. - Foreign Service
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
