Cosmetic surgery is not empowering

November 17, 2008 by Marisa Christensen 

Breast implants are reflective of the detrimental consequences of beauty norms

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, the number of women seeking breast implants shows noticeable augmentation.

Statistics reveal that in 2007, 347,254 women resolved to increase their busts, a 64 percent increase from 2000. More than 10,000 of those women were between the ages of 18 and 19 and an additional 100,000 were 20 to 29.

I know dozens of women who have undergone cosmetic surgery, the most common procedure being breast augmentation. My friends who lack implants often voice the desire to obtain them.

While I don’t want to alienate any of my cosmetically enlarged or soon-to-be friends and acquaintances, I have to wonder – what exactly is going on here?

A Parisian once told me, “The French assume that all American women have fake breasts.” While this may or may not be entirely true, I can see where he’s coming from.

We see fake breasts everywhere. My mom’s friends have them and my friends’ moms have them. Ninety-pound models sport double-D’s, a size that Mother Nature doesn’t tend to endow upon women of such slight stature. Cable networks air TV shows with entire plots revolving around cosmetic surgery.

As a society, we are coming dangerously close to substituting silicone and saline for tissue and mammary glands when it comes to the standard idea of what constitutes a breast. The appearance of a natural breast is being rejected for its firmer, rounder augmented counterpart.

In embracing and normalizing the artificial, we are defining natural breasts as foreign and even ugly. The underlying message is that if a woman wants to feel good about herself she should be willing to sacrifice thousands of dollars, elect to have surgery and undergo immeasurable amounts of pain recuperating.

The whole process doesn’t sound like it would make me feel very good at all.

I’m not pointing fingers at the women who undergo cosmetic surgery, either. Individual women are not culpable for the formation of beauty standards; rather, we are constantly forced to navigate them.

In a society where for women, image can be almost everything, it’s understandable that some would want to control what aesthetic aspects of ourselves we can.

Working in the entertainment industry I see firsthand the kind of pressure that beauty norms exert upon women. One might feel great about herself until her paycheck literally depends on how nice her abs look in a revealing uniform.

Thus, it’s evident that women’s personal beauty ideals might not be so personal.

Many women who receive cosmetic procedures object to the idea that they might have been compelled to do so by external forces. “I’m doing it for me,” they explain. “This is how I feel on the inside because the real me is characterized by large, permanently perky boobs.”

But what if we lived in a society that accepted the fact that women’s bodies did not naturally follow the example set by Pamela Anderson? If society wasn’t so obsessed with women’s bodies, particularly their breasts, would hundreds of thousands of women per year still opt to go under the knife?

Breast augmentations are only one of the most extreme types of cosmetic procedures. While certain procedures rival, if not surpass, the severity of breast augmentation (the thought of vaginal reconstruction makes me shudder), most of what women do to adhere to beauty norms is much more subtle.

So a critique of cosmetic surgery is lacking if it does not address the other ways in which women modify their appearances in the name of beauty.

Along with breast implants, women consume lipstick, curling irons and Brazilian waxes. Such products often allow women to tweak their appearances as governed by prevailing beauty norms, but could also arguably allow for self-expression.

While I identify as a feminist, I like make up. To me, however, there are myriad differences between breast implants and make up. Though make up probably stems from the same locus as do breast implants, I control every aspect of its application and can choose to wash it off and go without it. It is not painful and it is rather cheap compared to cosmetic surgery.

To be succinct, breast implants in comparison to other beauty rituals are extremely invasive and vastly more extreme. If there is any place to begin a critique on beauty norms, it should begin with breast implants.

Postmodern feminist Luce Irigaray once argued that women should “undo the effects of phallocentric discourse simply by overdoing them,”-that is, if men desire big breasts, women should sport huge ones as a sort of reverse psychology.

However, I’m not sure that this is what she had in mind.