A
Art Mann
Guest
Just stumbled on this article which was published earlier this year. Strikes me as a very interesting question. I trust the lovely ladies who do choose augmentation make a point of clearly thinking through the health risks.
ANDRÉ PICARD
The Globe and Mail
Why would a woman pay a considerable sum of money to have a surgeon cut open her body and implant globs of plastic filled with chemicals?
When you get right down to it, isn’t it just another form of female genital mutilation?
Those are a couple of the questions asked by Marianne Mollman of Amnesty International in a provocative new essay published by The Huffington Post.
Sure, conditions are far more sanitary at Western plastic-surgery clinics where women’s breasts are sliced and “enhanced” than in dirt-poor villages in the developing world where girls and young women have their clitorises and labia excised ritualistically.
Yes, the breast augmentation is done voluntarily, but then so too is much female genital mutilation. But both practices are driven by ingrained notions of a woman’s place in society, the quest for an ideal of beauty/sexuality and social/religious norms.
Isn’t the outcome ultimately the same, Ms. Mollman asks: surgery with no discernible health benefits (and many potential health risks), a negative impact on a woman’s sexual health, and permanent scars, physical and psychological?
Obviously, the mutilation of girls and women with rusty razors is a far greater horror, a human-rights violation on a grand scale.
But the rhetorical comparisons do serve a useful purpose. They should lead us to wonder why Western society is so enamoured of large breasts. The comparisons should serve too to remind us that breast augmentation surgery is not as banal as we tend to make it out to be.
That point is driven home by the current scandal unfolding from Australia to Uruguay. (It does not directly affect Canada or the U.S.) The French company Poly Implant Prothèse sold about 400,000 implants between 1991 and 2011, when it declared financial bankruptcy. But the current problem had its roots much earlier. The company allegedly, in a bid to cut costs, removed one protective layer from the product and used industrial-grade silicone (used in mattresses) in its implants instead of medical-grade silicone. Just as concerning as the company’s actions was the failure of regulators to catch the gross, decades-long violations.
There are fears that, due to the cutting of corners, the PIP implants are more likely to leak and, hence, raise a woman’s risk of cancer.
Countries and individuals are now scrambling to figure out what to do. Is it best to remove the implants or leave them in place? If they are to be removed, who will pay – the private clinics that implanted them, the state, or women themselves?
READ FULL STORY HERE
ANDRÉ PICARD
The Globe and Mail
Why would a woman pay a considerable sum of money to have a surgeon cut open her body and implant globs of plastic filled with chemicals?
When you get right down to it, isn’t it just another form of female genital mutilation?
Those are a couple of the questions asked by Marianne Mollman of Amnesty International in a provocative new essay published by The Huffington Post.
Sure, conditions are far more sanitary at Western plastic-surgery clinics where women’s breasts are sliced and “enhanced” than in dirt-poor villages in the developing world where girls and young women have their clitorises and labia excised ritualistically.
Yes, the breast augmentation is done voluntarily, but then so too is much female genital mutilation. But both practices are driven by ingrained notions of a woman’s place in society, the quest for an ideal of beauty/sexuality and social/religious norms.
Isn’t the outcome ultimately the same, Ms. Mollman asks: surgery with no discernible health benefits (and many potential health risks), a negative impact on a woman’s sexual health, and permanent scars, physical and psychological?
Obviously, the mutilation of girls and women with rusty razors is a far greater horror, a human-rights violation on a grand scale.
But the rhetorical comparisons do serve a useful purpose. They should lead us to wonder why Western society is so enamoured of large breasts. The comparisons should serve too to remind us that breast augmentation surgery is not as banal as we tend to make it out to be.
That point is driven home by the current scandal unfolding from Australia to Uruguay. (It does not directly affect Canada or the U.S.) The French company Poly Implant Prothèse sold about 400,000 implants between 1991 and 2011, when it declared financial bankruptcy. But the current problem had its roots much earlier. The company allegedly, in a bid to cut costs, removed one protective layer from the product and used industrial-grade silicone (used in mattresses) in its implants instead of medical-grade silicone. Just as concerning as the company’s actions was the failure of regulators to catch the gross, decades-long violations.
There are fears that, due to the cutting of corners, the PIP implants are more likely to leak and, hence, raise a woman’s risk of cancer.
Countries and individuals are now scrambling to figure out what to do. Is it best to remove the implants or leave them in place? If they are to be removed, who will pay – the private clinics that implanted them, the state, or women themselves?
READ FULL STORY HERE
