So, you have $10,000.00 saved from your job, from birthday gifts and maybe with a little help from your boyfriend (he’s so supportive!) and you are ready for your boob job. Oh, well, I guess the politically correct term for a boob job is now breast augmentation, but let’s be honest, the crass term is a little more appropriate at this point.
What was once a savior for women who underwent full mastectomies has now become a fad, and it’s not just older women and porn stars who are interested. Girls as young as 16 are beginning to beg their parents not for their first car, but for their first set of breasts!
Now, I remember when I was 16, flat as a board and looking around me at all those ‘blessed’ girls. I remember being so jealous, wishing that if only I could be half their size, the boys wouldn’t make fun of me anymore. I watched Maury and Montel and saw all those girls who were ‘geeks’ in school, coming back with brand new (plastic) bodies and rubbing it in the faces of their teenage tormentors. I was envious. I imagined the day when I could come back to my hometown and face down all of those bullies who laughed at my -A cup chest, who called my ‘Breadboard’ and ‘chicken legs’. But you know what, I got over it.
I developed when I turned 18, one of those weird, overnight anomalies. It was like I went to bed with the body of a twelve year old boy and awoke with the body of well, a 16 year old girl. It wasn’t as significant to everyone else as it was to me, but that didn’t matter. Suddenly I was no longer a negative bra size, I was a small B! Hurray! Never before had that letter had such magic connotations in my life!
Funny thing is, after the boys at school realized that they couldn’t pick on me for that anymore, they found something else to torment me about. It was around then that I realized it wasn’t my breasts (or lack thereof) that made me one of their targets, it was that I was different in countless ways. I was a tomboy, a dancer and I’ll admit it, pretty mouthy.
So, all that time I spent wishing and hoping for bigger breasts was actually me wishing and hoping to fit in, and in the end, my breast size had nothing to do with how well I fit in. I could have been a D cup at 14 and still would have continued to create friction with certain groups of kids in my school. My development changed nothing about my life or friends, all it did was force me to go bra shopping for the first time, which is another traumatic experience that I will save for another day…
So, fast forward to today, breast augmentations are exploding as the new facials…something that is not considered a surgery so much as a minor personal improvement. When I was growing up, boob jobs were easy to spot, basketball-size lumps of flesh attached to a woman’s chest. Obscenely perky breasts sitting on women who could have granddaughters with larger breasts.
But is this trend really a good idea? Should we be playing God with our own bodies? Just because we are able to lift, fill, adjust or suck out the things we are unhappy about in our bodies, does that mean that we should? I decided to look into the risks and advantages this particular surgery and even investigate some proprietors in my community to see what I could find out.
The Risks:
Let’s start by assuming that you have already had the surgery done, that the doctor you saw was impeccable, that there are no complications at all and you are ecstatic with the results. Well, surprise, the manufacturers of the implants themselves admit that each implant is only constructed to last between seven and ten years.
Let’s do the math;
Average cost for breast augmentation- $6,000.00 - $12,000.00 (avg. $8,000.00)
If you have your first surgery in your mid-late twenties and you live to be 80, maybe stopping the breast augmentation when you hit 70 (maybe!)
20’s - $8,000.00
30’s - $8,000.00
40’s - $8,000.00
50’s - $8,000.00
60’s - $8,000.00
Grand Total - $40,000.00!
Now remember, this is not calculated to account for inflation, and this is in the best case scenario, where there are no complications, no adjustments required and no additional health problems associated with every one of these surgeries. Every time you go under the knife for an implant replacement, you are going in for major surgery and all of the risks associated with that are present for each and every procedure. Look at the recent stories in the media, Kanye West’s mother recently died on the table while undergoing cosmetic surgery, not exactly a glowing review for the safety of cosmetic surgery.
Capsular Contraction
This is the most prevalent complication with breast implants and is basically what happens when the shell of the implant contracts around the contents and cause the silicone or saline to harden. This is what causes those hard lines around the implant that you can see on women with blatant implants. The unfortunate reality is that this condition can happen to anyone who gets the procedure done, even those who only increase their bust by a single cup size.
The reason that this complication is so prevalent is because it is caused primarily by the body’s reaction to a foreign object lodged in living tissue. The body has tried to absorb the implant (a foreign object), failed, and now begins to build a wall of tissue around the implant to keep it separate from the rest of the body. The additional pressure on the implant causes the shell of the implant to contract, thus beginning the process of capsular contraction.
Doctors are beginning to find that placing the implant behind the pectoral muscle instead of on top of it can help to decrease the frequency of the issue, but does not solve the problem completely by any means.
Some other risks include
Making mammogram scans harder and making it more difficult to see and diagnose breast abnormalities including tumours.
Saline poisoning
Silicone poisoning
Deflation of the implant
Ruptured implants
Nipple numbness (15% of those who underwent the surgery found this to some degree)
Potential difficulty producing milk for breast feeding
On top of these risks, women with breast augmentations are;
Twice as likely to end up with brain cancer
Three times as likely to contract lung cancer
Ten times as likely to commit suicide
For further risks and more information about the aforementioned risks, please see
www.healthcanada.ca
www.thebreastsite.com
www.breastaugmentation-resource.com
Canadian Law Journal - Citation Hollis v. Dow Corning Corp
Dec. 21, 1995
Docket # 23776
www.asaps.com (the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery)
A few final statistics to leave with you before foraying into the next section of this journey to aesthetic perfection: according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 51% of women who undergo a breast reconstruction or breast augmentation are forced to undergo additional surgeries due to complications from the initial surgery. Ultimately, 40% of women decide to remove all traces of their implants. If almost half of the women who thought that the surgery was a great idea decide to remove the very thing that they saved thousands for, underwent anaesthesia, medical surgery and a painful recovery for, would they think today that it was all worth it? Is it?
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