Lush Binder Collection

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz sounds loeltothe grownups have taken over finally from * (him/they).

They really should have gone full anti vivisection league and printed off poster sized photos...

Comment on their Instagram post says they have temporarily suspended the partnership whilst they sort out some logistical issues.

protest today

Well. That’s waaay more eloquent than my mentally composed ‘f off you sick b*s’!

This is the email I wrote to them - I’m not sure how good it is, I was so angry and upset!

To whom it may concern,

I have just seen Lush Paddington’s Instagram about offering breast binding apparatus. For a company that is against cruelty to animals I am amazed that you are advocating this barbaric practice for free to girls. And without parental consent?

Had you done any research into breast binding (besides Mermaids which is a misinformed propaganda machine) you would know that breast binding is incredibly harmful to young developing women. Not only can it cause rib constriction,bone deformity and breathing difficulties, and risk of heart attacks. (
ftmtopsurgery.ca/blog/ftm-faq/health-consequences-chest-binding/
) But hey - what’s a few deformed bodies if you’re on “the right side?” Why listen to the thousands of women who see this as child abuse? Many doctors also had agree but are too scared to speak out due to the vice like grip of stonewall. If you follow the news you will see the tide is turning against stonewall and that the BBC, channel 4 and the department of health have all pulled out of its diversity scheme due to its exact nature being the opposite of what it preaches.

I’m a secondary school teacher at an all girls school and I see the first hand effects of the trans trend every day - how would you handle an 11 year old girl telling you that they’re a boy and that I can’t tell their parents? This is not a trans student, this is a child with problems and your facile, thoughtless approach to these vulnerable children is dangerous and a safeguarding issue.

I buy from lush all the time - no longer. Until you stop supporting the abuse of young girls and erasure of women then I won’t support you. But so long as no rabbits are getting hurt - phew!

Yours,
Xxxx

Set foot in their shops 🙄

Honest to fuck these people are sick. Completely sick. Never will I set food in their chops again.

LETTER TO LUSH
This LUSH + Ogre evangelism will harm impressionable young customers. The medical harms of binding and and the social harm of being 'evangelistic' about binding, are discussed in this article
www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-mermaids-promoting-breast-binding-at-events-for-young-people-

The baroness is amazing

I see the Baroness has written to the owner. Does he even know or care what the shops are up to?

I’m old enough to have been a Cosmetics To Go customer and thought this man had scruples and ethics. Now I don’t think so. ££££££££££

My tiny mind still thinking about medical contraindications for binding* & has occurred that surely being on blockers is one? I don’t know how quickly they deplete bone mass, but you don’t want to be mixing a reduction in bone density with basically crushing your ribcage.

Again considering depleted bone mass, girls who wish to bind as part of a broader pattern of behaviour related to retaining a childlike body (which of course hasn’t been & currently can’t be studied purely because of the oppressive environment around these things so there’s only sparse anecdata available) are also at more risk of fractures due to poor bone density (it’s rare children & adolescents with [untreated] eating disorders manage to take sufficient nutritional supplements to meet their needs). They are also at heightened risk of loss of consciousness (simply because you’ve stacked on another potential cause); skin issues; getting into serious difficulties if they “cannot”** remove their binder to exercise in line with manufacturers’ guidance; and potential complications - both physical and mental - from trying to measure “success” with binder sizes, ignoring the fact that our ribcages cannot lose weight.

There are specific issues relating to girls with ASD binding too. In case there’s any doubt, not all of the following apply to all girls with ASD - just as you’d girls with ASD who’d run miles from a binder precisely because of the sensory input it gives. Hence some being directly contradictory:
• girls with ASD thinking it is part of The Rules for being Non-Binary that you have to bind & becoming distressed when unable to do so even if they find it unpleasant
• deliberately wearing a binder that is too tight due to sensory-seeking behaviours
• issues with processing/understanding pain leading to injury
• decreased ability to “mask” due to effects of binding impacting on behaviour & relationships leading to distress
Those are just the ones that occur off the top of my [headache-filled] head having not really slept, am sure there are others - there are definitely some dancing out of reach just on the edges of my mind…

Essentially, some of the girls who we know, even without the research being permitted are particularly likely to claim a non-“cis” identity are scrambling to get/do something with the potential to cause them even more damage than it would [most/many?] of their peers. Horrific.

• Obviously it’s wildly unhealthy for anyone to do it; I suppose I mean in the sense of girls who may suffer more serious damage more quickly, IYSWIM? ** Inverted commas as while obviously it remains physically possible there will be girls & young women to whom it feels utterly impossible - in the same way they are physically capable of eating but you might as well be asking them to undertake a quick & totally unaided trip to the moon & back.

@Thefartingsofaofdenmarkstreet it's palpable, isn't it, the dissonance between body positivity and "do anything to your body in the name of pursuing your gender ideal" - from Jameela Jamil and so many others.

The other thing I cannot get my head around is how like Jameela Jamil can make a huge thing about young women loving their bodies, not worrying about how much they weigh, not photoshopping themselves or getting surgery to be 'perfect'....but at the same time think that young girls crushing their developing breasts with painful equipment so that they don't grow properly is progressive and something to be celebrated? I don't get it?

I really do think the game is up very soon though. How can anyone look at this and think, 'yes, this is a bright progressive future'?

The scheme specifies it's restricted to one per customer, too. Soooo... even if you can afford to buy an additional one so you can rotate them for washing, they won't sell you it.

One in eleven children in the UK have asthma; and while it is common, it can be fatal - & a binder would absolutely make treating an attack harder.

40% of children in the UK have been diagnosed with [at least one] allergy.

About one in five children in the UK has eczema.

There is some overlap between the populations, but given none of the conditions is more common in one sex than the other, that’s a HUGE number of people who shouldn’t bind for medical reasons, without even considering much of the list of reasons. Really worryingly, there will be girls who shouldn’t bind for medical reasons who will do so anyway - some thinking it genuinely won’t be a problem; some thinking they’ll be able to self-manage any resulting issues; & some in a self-destructive “I won’t let my health be in charge” mindset of the sort that sees young people with allergies end up in A&E with anaphylaxis after failing to take precautions/young people with epilepsy there because they pushed their seizure threshold beyond ALL its limits (sure I can skip several meals, not sleep for a couple of days & drink loads: what could go wrong?); & forms part of the tangled thinking behind diabulimia.

And of course a girl who develops eczema/other skin issues from binding is totally going to get it checked out. At once. Before she ends up with [serious] infections & wounds that refuse to heal, I mean. (Oh and even if she didn’t previously have skin issues, if she’s got hold of testosterone gel, which we know girls are doing before they’re 18, one side-effect is acne. Combining acne on your chest with binding is going to make your skin incredibly unhappy, to put it in the least unpleasant way possible.)

That’s probably one of the reasons for the skin infections, not washing them adequately, I imagine.

When I was young I could go for days without washing a bra - hardly thought about it. (Sounds grim, but young women don’t sweat much there.) After having a baby, putting on weight and acquiring norks the size of Sputnik, I regularly get what many older/overweight women do - occasional rashes under the breast, which can be very painful. Needs creams/drying carefully/washing bras every day/occasional antifungals. Not nice but a fact of life!

Never occurred to me that it was a thing that could happen for even a moment before I had DD. But I presume that binding squashes things down, and creates a breeding ground for sweat/bacteria/rashes under and around the breast, especially given the fact binders are also hot and sweaty and not easily washed.

So it’s no surprise the side effects include a high percentage of skin infections. This probably includes infected and raw places under the bound breast which are painful, really difficult to treat and can smell bad if not given air/opportunity to dry and heal.

But yay, let’s “treat” dysphoria by giving young women extra things to feel bad about their body for. How stunning and brave!

I often wonder about something much more basic with binders - hygiene. If you only have one how often do you wash it if you are wearing it everyday? Do you just give it a quick swirl in the basin if you don't want your mum to see it? How do you dry it?

The original insta post says to measure carefully as they can't do refunds/exchanges.

So if NB kido gets home with their much wanted breast binder and they've measured incorrectly, and its way too tight....then what? How do they know how tight is too tight. I can imagine most would just carry on anyway, cos you expect it to pinch a bit anyway.

breast binding is NEVER safe

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10181729/Lush-comes-fire-offering-chest-binder-collection-service.html#article-10181729

The mail have picked up the story

This shit is actually dystopian. I can't really believe this happening to our kids. I will never ever step foot in Lush again.