Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Au Natural

The other day I came across this article on the Corriere della Sera website.

For those of you who do not know, Corriere della Sera is a major Italian newspaper. The article talks about the "disappearance of natural breasts" due to the large increase of breast augmentations in the USA. It claims that natural breasts could soon be a thing of the past now that this operation is the most common plastic surgery in the country, surpassing liposuction.

Although I am not staunchly against plastic surgery I find the number of women who get boob jobs to be very scary. Most seem unaware that implants are not meant to be permanent. The average implants have to be replaced every ten years, meaning that a 20-year-old could have to undergo 5 interventions in her lifetime. That is, of course, if they do in fact last the full ten years. I also recently read an article about banning breast augmentation for underage girls--as if that should even be an issue?!

Unlike many other cosmetic interventions, breast augmentations place a foreign object in your body, making them riskier then say, a nose job, because even if the procedure goes smoothly, there is always a risk that the implant is faulty or simply rejected by your body. Regardless, I can also respect that this procedure does allow many women to feel better about themselves, especially cancer survivors who now have a chance at reconstruction, permitting them to feel more like themselves. I worry though, about what it means when so many women are getting GG cups put onto their size 2 frames, and how natural breasts have become almost unrecognizable in pop culture. Why do we feel so compelled to prefer something so unnatural? Yikes indeed!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Victoria Beckam looked cuter back then. It's a shame.

Kataroma said...

I agree with anon.

As a person with (naturally) large breasts - let me tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be. It's hard to find clothes which fit and a lot of fashions are off-limits (halter tops, anything where you can't wear a heavy-duty bra, crew necks, turtle necks, heavy sweaters etc.). It's also very hard to find underwear and swimsuits which fit and offer enough support. I wear almost exclusively 'old lady' bras - not terribly sexy. :(Now that I'm breastfeeding they're starting to sag. :( If I could choose I'd rather smaller breasts - seriously.