Why I Won’t Get Breast Implants
Of course I care about my looks. How could I not? I grew up in this culture, which always made it clear to me in ways big and small that I and other little girls were valued for our appearances, not our characters, personality or intellect.
I could tell in second grade when the special IQ tester the school had called in told my family mine was 165 that such brilliance was not as important as being pretty and popular. When I was skipped to third grade and placed in special classes, I already feared at such a young age being lumped in with the nerds. And rather than nurturing the next Steven Hawking, my family watched for signs of budding beauty as well as ominous signals that I was going off track.
“Oh look,” said my loving dad pointing at my emerging cheekbones, “your face has structure. You’re going to be pretty.”
“Oh look,” said my loving mom, pointing at my chubby thighs, “you’re getting fat. You need to go to Weight Watchers.”
This wasn’t just my parents imposing their private whims. Their obsession with female beauty reflected that of the whole society’s. In fact when my dad said my fact had “structure,” he was imitating that same line from the movie Paper Moon when the older woman desperate to get Ryan O’Neil’s character tries to placate his alienated and lonely little girl by promising that some day her looks would get her that coveted male attention.
I was given a vanity to sit at, with its own mirror and make-up, the name vanity itself reflecting the unhealthy obsession with external appearance that was cultivated in me as part of my normal socialization as a female
I was give Cinderella to listen to and Sleeping Beauty to read (this was in the days before home video, thank the goddess) so that I could dream of being a woman with no desire save that of being desirable.
And mom didn’t invent Weight Watchers from her fervid imagination either. This organization existed and still exists to serve a cultural obsession with slenderness, one which had oppressed her freedom long before it did mine. I’ll never forget the humiliation of those weigh-ins in front of everyone. “You’ve lost 1/2 pound,” the leader would shout, or more likely “you’ve gained three pounds this week!”
The message was loud and clear: I had failed. Every time it was called to my attention that I was not thin and pretty I knew I was letting everyone down. And I mean everyone. From the warm bosom of the nuclear family to total strangers on the street, no one it seems ever hesitated to comment on my looks.
Even though already-pretty Kim who went on to be a Laker Girl was only “teasing” when she called me “the big fig Newton” in elementary school, we both knew the reality of the situation. I was a fat smart girl in a culture that preferred their women vapid and thin, like her.
And then in junior high school, Devon, was that her name? She of the golden hair and perfect frame. “How much do you weigh?” she’d ask as we munched our sandwiches, so sweetly that I felt hot confusion at whether or not to comply with her order to provide the poundage. I thought she’d wanted to eat lunch with me to be friends. Maybe this was what friendship was about? It sure felt more like intrusive and humiliating interrogation. Friends, I decided, I could do without. I spent the remainder of junior high buried in books, preferring fantasy over intimacy.
It wasn’t only girls and women who commented on my looks, either. Men have always freely announced their impressions, good or bad. “Here’s a big old fatty,” said a drunken blond surfer guy as I entered a club in Orange County one night, thinking, I might add, that I looked quite cute until he ripped that away from me. “Lose weight,” a black man barked at me as I walked down the streets of Harlem. The evils of racism I was beginning to realize by then, didn’t necessarily sensitize one to the evils of sexism.
The comments haven’t always been cruel, of course, which furthered the pressure I placed on myself to live up to the standards of others. After I slimmed down and entered high school as a cute freshman girl, nominated for soccer queen and chased by cute guys, I grew hungry for approval rather than disapproval, something I now realize only after years of reading and teaching feminism was a logical response to the treatment I, and so many other women in this country, receive on a daily basis.
Thought we pride ourselves in the United States on being individuals with free will, I’ve learned that this myth hides a much more powerful reality: for women, that “self” can only be free according to mainstream standards if it complies with coercive ideals regarding our looks and our behavior.
My weight, my attitude, my hair, my skin, my eyes, my ankles, my ass, my thighs, my color, and yes my breasts all belong not to me, it turns out, but to others. And when any of these items failed to please, I heard about it, loud and clear.
But wait! The same sexist environment that creates the problem also offers a solution. Do anything you possibly can, at any price, at any risk, in order to comply with the stereotype of feminine beauty. Diet, of course, purchase beauty products, of course, get surgery, of course—all because your “self” demands it. Obsess about your looks, obsess about the looks of other women, find yourself constantly substandard, view other women as competitors, and you will be normal and accepted.
Born with small breasts? Uneven breasts? Large areolaed breasts? Breasts sag after weight loss? Lose mass after breastfeeding? Turn soft in midlife? No problem. Just get a doctor to “fix” you, because according to the medical establishment, these breasts are diseased and in need of a diagnosis (one’s called “ptosis”) and a cure by way of the knife.
I always knew that my breasts weren’t right, too far apart, not big enough, too droopy, areola too large. How did I know these things? Well, porn, for one, that bastion of ideal femininity. When I was coming of age I had to sneak my brothers’ Playboys and Penthouses out of their hiding places under the bed to satisfy my curiosity about sexuality, that human necessity the US prefers to simultaneously ignore and obsess about.
Looking at these airbrushed images, comparing myself, knowing that the women who graced the pages were special creatures far removed from my dumpy little kid reality, I formed an impression of woman as this object one strove to attain being, not merely the natural biological sex of over half the population of the world.
And I was closer to the truth than I knew at the time. For these images were false, represented not inevitable timeless standards of beauty, but those of my particular culture and rendered through technology. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that fat is hot in many parts of the world and tiny breasts were in vogue in different periods in history and some cultures don’t use breasts as a part of sexuality or eroticism at all.
All I knew was everywhere I looked, whether I dug dirty magazines out from their hidey holes or looked at the racks of the magazines at Alpha Beta, a woman was staring back at me, with a sultry expression on her face, daring me to look like her. I felt as if we both knew I never could.
Nor could they, as it turns out. Upon the death of photographer Francesco Scavullo, Helen Gurley Brown reminisced about those early covers of Cosmopolitan. “I wanted to show bosom, “ she said. “I knew women wanted to look at bosom as much as men did, to see how they compared. This was before the time of breast augmentation, and Francesco…always showed bosom. They used bobby sox, breast tape, baseballs, whatever.”
Boy do I wish those magazine covers had carried a disclaimer: “Warning. These models have baseballs in their bras. Do not attempt to look like this at home.”
But they did not. Instead the opposite happened. We all assumed that is what women actually look like and that we were not really women or woman enough at least if we did not look like that. And so guess what?
Note that Gurley Brown says “that was before the time of breast augmentation.” What she does not say is that those images caused the time of breast augmentation, made millions of women judge ourselves negatively and decide that we “needed” to look like cover models who didn’t look like that anyway.
Boom, into this perfect soil, the “need” for breast implant surgery is sewn. Basically it’s a way to get those baseballs out of your bra and right into your chest wall. Thanks Francesco! Rest in peace.
As a young woman, I never considered changing my breasts even though I knew they weren’t up to Cosmo cover standards. During adolescence I recall one occasion when some men went around the circle of a group of girls and commented on our breast size. When it was my turn, I held my breath. What would the judgment be? “Well,” said the oldest one, the leader, “more than a mouthful’s a waste.”
I didn’t know enough about feminism at the time to ask him why he was still wanting to suckle at the age of 22, why our breasts were his business at all since we weren’t his mother and he’d long since been weaned anyway. All I felt was relief. They weren’t spectacular, but they were good enough. Male approval. Phew.
Bras took care of the lack of cleavage, cramming those hapless orbs together in a way that satisfied visual demand. Another problem solved.
As to the large areolae, I periodically spent brief moments fantasizing about them being smaller, wondering if make-up might help, or envying those of other girls, like the beauteous Theresa Young in seventh-grade gym class with the tiny little raspberries at the end of her perky white boobs, but by and large I just figured there was nothing to be done about it. And indeed in terms of male sexual satisfaction, the appearance of my breasts never seemed an issue, except one time when disgruntled suitor whom I had rejected said to the man I had chosen over him, “her breasts are all right if you like big nipples.”
Humph, I thought smugly, they aren’t nipples, you dope, they are areolae. But still, there was the truth one more time. I didn’t own my self. It was the property of men and male culture.
Truly the men who have loved me—both of them-- have never made me feel inadequate about my breasts. But by the time you spend decades learning that your job as woman is to look a certain way, it really doesn’t matter what some individual might say. The sexist judge has become an intrinsic part of your own psyche. The sexist judge has become, I fear, your “self.”
That explains why so many women on these rip-em-up and put-em-back together shows currently so popular on television say they are not responding to the demands of their partner when they seek out life altering and unnecessary surgery in order to feel loveable. “I think she’s fine,” says the confused mate each week. “But if it’s something she wants for her SELF…..”
There it is again, that notion of the independent female self that really means “who I am is what I think I look like to you.” Individual women are not to blame for having this insecure identity, even when we might look on and say “I see nothing wrong with how you look” and wonder why she’s so vain and insecure. That woman craving surgery’s not crazy; she’s responding logically to the demands of an insane society whose valuation of women has become completely out of balance. There’s a place for beauty in our world, but come on, it’s not nearly as important as the advertisements claim.
Frankly I don’t give a rat’s ass what my tits look like. What possible difference could it make to me? I can’t even see them for the most part, and their looks don’t have anything to do with their function, anyway, which is to deliver nutrition to the young.
The only reason I can see to care about my breast’s appearance is to make sure they please other people since breasts are a current focus of beauty in the United States. With that desire to feel desirable in mind, I began to judge myself harshly once I entered my forties and natural changes began to occur in their texture and size and placement. They were already not good enough and now it seemed they were even worse.
Should I lift them? Should I supplement them with implants? These questions flooded my head, prompted by near omnipresent articles and programs and even commercials on television promising fulfillment through unnecessary body-altering surgery.
So I talked to a doctor. Well, he said, to lift your breasts would leave huge anchor shaped scars across them. Nope, no thanks. I’m all about not having scars. Remember the point is trying to fit into a culture that loathes female bodily imperfection, that loathes nature, in other words. So a lift was out. “If we did the surgery we could reduce the size of the areola,” he offered unbidden, perhaps thinking that would be the key to separating me from my $5000.
Instead I was reminded one more time, this time in a medical context, that my natural body was somehow outside of nature, paradoxically in some yet untamed and uncivilized realm that needed to be corralled and lassoed into submission. No, no cutting into my breasts, I said firmly.
“Well how about implants?” he offered hopefully. “We could go in under your arm, or under your breast, or even through your belly button.” I was waiting for him to offer to cram them down my nose.
So there I was, poised at the brink between cultural approval or having a sense of self that belongs to me and to me alone. I had a choice to make. “I don’t think I want breast implants,” I finally said. “Why not?” “Well,” I searched inside for the truth, something we women are discouraged from telling ourselves or other people. “Because I teach feminist theory,” I said, “and I’d feel like an idiot sitting up there in front of my class talking about empowering women and having big fake boobs while doing so.”
That’ll shut him up, I thought.
I was wrong. “Oh,” he said, “so it’s about what other people would think?”
Now here’s a fascinating irony. In my burgeoning desire to have a secure sense of self that does not rely on the approval of others to exist, standing there vulnerable and naked in that green paper dress with the opening in the front, I lean upon the one movement—the only movement--in our culture that advocates on behalf of women as independent and fully human human beings. But what this doctor hears me saying instead is that unless I go along with his program, that sexist mainstream belief that my “self” should correspond to one of his “after” pictures, then I am caving into other peoples’ opinions and not thinking for myself.
Ha!
I learned that day that instead of trying to change my looks, I needed to change my outlook. I began cultivating the ability to see differently when I looked in the mirror, saying a prayer of gratitude for my healthy breast tissue, looking with love and gratitude and respect and, yes, lust for myself and my breasts. After all, they’re just tits. Any pleasure I get from them should be because they please me, not someone else, especially not an imaginary viewer.