Silicone Is Back!
Silicone Is Back!
By Joe Bob Briggs
August 11, 2003
Is this a good or a bad thing? After all, the trend in recent years has been toward the lean-and-lanky waifish tomboy look anyway. Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson--do they even have breasts? Renee Zellweger, arguably one of the most popular actresses working today, only has Bazoomas when she porks up for a "Bridget Jones" movie. Sure, you've got your Halle Berrys and your Salma Hayeks, but they've got that exotic vibe going for them. When was the last time somebody held up Pamela Anderson as a role model? I don't think so.
Of course, the last decade hasn't been entirely without artificial juice for the Jahoobies. When silicone was outlawed, plastic surgeons switched to a saline solution. Unfortunately, many women reported a "slosh effect" when their Blouse Bunnies were subjected to pressure, so apparently there were some otherwise amorous bedroom moments that resulted in the exclamation, "Ewwwwwwwwwww."
One thing we know for sure, though. This time around the battle to hooch up your Oingo Boingos with silicone is going to be much tougher than it was in the eighties. For one thing, there are actually organized anti-silicone women's-rights groups that wear T-shirts with slogans like "NO SILICONE, NO SALINE, NO SIR" and "MOTHER'S MILK DOESN'T COME IN PLASTIC JUGS." The National Organization for Women has come out against the re-legalization of silicone, as has Public Citizen. On the other side of this back-stage political battle are plastic surgeons (duh) and the companies that actually manufacture the silicone boobie-baggies.
The odd thing about the issue is that no one can agree on the facts. Silicone implants were taken off the market after several thousand women claimed that they got everything from breast cancer to rheumatoid arthritis to lupus as a result of seepage. (The most common cause of seepage is that the woman takes a blow to the chest, in a car accident or some other trauma, and the baggie splatters open. This can happen with saline, too, but apparently it's not as toxic.) And companies like Dow Corning paid out millions in lawsuits.
But in the year 2000 the Institute of Medicine--part of the National Academy of Sciences--released a study stating that, after several years of research and over 1,000 studies, there was no evidence that silicone implants cause any disease. That put the FDA in the sticky position of having to reconsider whether to approve them, since it's not necessary for substances to be totally safe to be approved. It's just necessary for the maker to post adequate warnings about the risk. "Legal but risky" is basically the warning everyone already got before 1992, and that's all that manufacturers are asking for. Presumably you would have to sign a 97-page legal release form before the surgeon would agree to inflate your Sweater Puppets.
(Another extremely strange thing about the 1992 ban: it didn't apply to women who had mastectomies. If you had a mastectomy, you were still eligible for silicone. They just didn't want any 16-year-old girls stopping by on spring break to get their Fujiyamas rebuilt with the stuff.)
Someday, hundreds of years from now, someone will write a social history of the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and there will be a footnote that reads:
"Beginning in the 1980s, a bizarre ritual swept the civilized west, with frenzied women asking medical professionals to slice open their chests and insert packets full of chemicals in order to enhance their 'beauty.' Although few records remain of the practice, it appears that many of the women emerged from surgery with outsized globular mammaries, considered highly attractive at the time."
But in fact, it's already not attractive. You see a woman like that, and you think "porn star" at best, "trailer trash" at worst. Perfectly round flesh-stretching soccer balls projecting off a woman's chest like a a billboard for ball bearings doesn't exactly register in the male imagination as a potential hot date. I do have to give the surgeons a little credit here, though. You don't see the Double Bowling Ball look quite as much anymore, as they now sculpt the saline packets into shapes called "high profile," "tear-drop" and "anatomical." (I have no idea.)
It's really too bad that God didn't choose to put breasts on men, because then we would never have this medical dilemma, and for a simple reason--men could never stand this much pain! The surgery is nasty. And even if you have no problems at all, you have to go back in every 10 years and get the things replaced, lest you suffer complications like rupture, "gel-bleed," hardness, wrinkling, sagging, scarring, toxic mold (!) or lack of feeling. That's just more knifework and maintenance than any man would ever voluntarily put up with.
Women, however, are undeterred. In 1992, there were 32,607 cosmetic breast implant surgeries in America. In 2000 there were 236,888, even though the cost had risen to an average of $5300. That's an increase of 626 percent, meaning six times as many women today are willing to say, "Go ahead, doc, just let her rip and turn these Mushmelons into Pia Zadoras." Two weeks later they're still in agonizing pain, but they're deliriously happy! "I did this for me," they all announce. Ooooooookay.
Another interesting breast enlargement fact. Almost every woman who has the surgery shows up in the doctor's office with the same publication to show him pictures of her ideal breasts: the Victoria's Secret catalog. It kind of nixes the argument that breast implants are the result of male domination, since no male in his right mind would enter a Victoria's Secret store for any reason.
I still think the timing on this is out of joint, though. We're entering an era not unlike the Jazz Age, when flappers sometimes bound their chests to look like boys. It was partly a revolt against their mothers, who wore corsets and bustles, but it was also a symbol of freedom in itself, especially freedom to be independent spirits: by looking like men they fit more easily into the workplace. Coco Chanel led that rebellion, and then Mary Quant led the second anti-breast rebellion in the sixties, when the mini-skirt demanded a lithe and lean look, braless and flat. Twiggy was the first supermodel with a concave chest.
In other words, girls, it's not really the time to be shelling out cash for a couple of store-bought Annette Funicello Bazonkers. Mosquito Bites are in.
© 2003 Joe Bob Briggs All Rights Reserved