To think that the West is seriously fucked up on the bosom front?

[Hullygully]

Bags of poison sewn into our infant feeding parts.

How fucked up is that?

Well said you perceptionality .

I do agree completely.

And i do think the NHS should pay if the private companies won't.

yup make up sucks too....dont use it personally.

my body was ruined

Ruined? According to whose criteria?
A media and culture which has established an unnatural concept of what women should look like - particularly in association with childbirth.

My great grandmother had 11 chidlren. I can't imagine she ever wept over the state of her breasts because that generation was spared the absurd concepts of manufactured femaleness that we are subjected to.
Why are so many women so ashamed of their bodies after having children? Why are we all supposed to remain perky firm adolescent girlies?
Could it be that this society doesn't really like or value grown up women?

yeah I was just looking at my post pregnancy tummy. Total wreck. But it just makes me feel... I dunno... anchored maybe.

I made a choice, I took my life the way I wanted it to go and now I have a badge of honour.

TBH I think it helps that I have very little natural beauty at all. You maybe can't miss what you never had and I have had to make my life be about making people judge me for who I am inside!

For me, it was ruined mishtake - I hated it like that. Why, who knows? All I know is that I'm happier now. I did it for myself not for anyone else.

I think you are absolutely right that society puts pressure on women not to age, maybe that's wrong. But I'm still entitled to feel the way I do about my own body. I think life is too short to put yourself in therapy for every single hang up you have or try to come to a different conclusion. If I did that I'd be doing it for someone else - what would be the point?

"Eat more " Is a narrow minded response. I'm short, and my genetics dictate where and how fat lays on my body.
FWIW I have always been weedy. Shit, if someone is chubby do you think its okay to tell them to diet?

There's a lot of point in doing things for other people. That's what this thread is about surely? What has happened to society, what impact is that going to have on our daughters and what can we do about it?

Perception can you accept though that because you decided you needed to improve your breasts surgically that other people will see that and it will alter their perception of when a surgical intervention is 'necessary'?

You have added another 1 to the total of boob jobs that the media report endlessly and made it seem that little bit more mainstream, acceptable and even desirable.

If it was just you then it would make no difference, but there are so many people doing the same thing that it adds up to more pressure on people to judge their appearance and resort to surgery to correct it.

But why entrophy? Nobody even knows I've had it done unless I tell them. My own parents don't even know and have never asked. Good surgery should look natural - it should not look obvious.

To be fair, I know plenty of women whose boobs still look great after children, even my mum who's 65. The difference in mine was quite dramatic.

As I said, it goes in the stats. There have been lots of people on hear talking about how happy a boob job has made a friend of theirs etc. It all adds up.

I am not holding you responsible for the whole shebang, I am just trying to explain why your decision on how to deal with your body image issue affects me, and more importantly my DD who I am scared shitless will be growing up in a world were the answer to everything is surgery.

PR, but you do tell people! You are on an internet thread telling women that you have breast implants and that it is a good thing. People are reading it and people in the future will search for breast implants and pull up this thread and that may have an impact on their decision to have surgery.

cloths indeed. There are a lot of people on this thread saying a) my boob job made me so happy when my physical appearance made my unhappy and b) its noone elses business but mine. Contradictory Im afraid.

I have implants (saline). Breastfed both dcs till 1 year old. Consider myself a feminist. Quite like the way my boobs look now compared with ironing board stylee before. Er, that's it.

Yes I am adding my contribution to this discussion because I feel that people who have implants are unfairly misrepresented. People will always do things that you don't personally agree with but that doesn't mean it's right to dictate your preferred version of how the world should be or tell people they should do it a different way.

People will always want to make themselves look better (as they see it) and it does not begin and end with breast implants.

There is a popular 'Princessing' thread in style and beauty which has a schedule for people to stick to to improve their looks, including teeth whitening. Is that wrong as well?

hell yes. IMO.

And by 'people' you mean women. Men take small measures to improve their appearance - and often make decisions that dont reflect societal opinions of beauty. Women on the other hand seem to think they have to 'look their best' in order to get a foot in the door.

I think it's all horrible. We are selling ourselves short by thinking we need to sell ourselves at all.

perception -I dont get it. You say that no-one knows unless you tell them, but you also say there was a dramatic difference. Surely people must have noticed!!
Did you consider that your breasts could continue to grow and change? As I said way upthread, I was no more than 32a as a teen but I continued to grow up till I got pregnant age 28 (when they got huge)
Yours could have changed naturally

I also look at my wrecked post baby x3 body and think its a badge of honour rather than something to feel ashamed of.

Also I have never considered myself to be gorgeously beautiful or anything but just felt quite content with what I am, knowing that my mind is the important thing. Surely that is what should be valued in a person?

No, they didn't just change naturally. They changed after 4 years of inflating and deflating, much like a tummy sags after a baby has been inside. The difference is evident to me only - they are about the same now as they were before children. In between I just wore gel bras so from the outside they always looked the same. Incidently I have a slightly saggy tummy but that doesn't bother me - I would not have surgery for that.

entropy - I don't really agree that men take small measures to improve their appearance. Increasing numbers of men now have surgical and non-surgical procedures, including fillers and botox. I would agree however, that men are allowed to age and still be attractive whereas women are not. It is horrible, I agree. I remember talking to a woman in a salon who said that since she was getting older she felt the need to improve her appearance so that people at work would not decide she was looking a bit old and get rid of her. She worked for the NHS.

I think that since I work in the beauty industry (where the whole thing is built upon how people feel about how they look) then perhaps we won't agree. In an ideal world people's minds would be the most important things but it isn't like that in any part of the world really is it? I don't think preoccupation with appearance is something only apparent in the western world.

Thats a fair point about men...I am just hopelessly out of date (no TV, dont read papers/magazines etc).

I think the beauty industry is somewhat proactive about this though. They dont just aim to help people who are feeling down about their appearance, they cover the world in images and adverts with the express purpose of telling people that beauty is necessary for success and that it will make you happier if you look better. They suggest that buying their product will make you look like a film star but in reality the net effect is to make you slightly poorer (in the pocket and in time lost primping every day) and to pass the message onto the next generation that it's not okay to just go through life looking the way you do. As a market building strategy, it is impeccable. As a society fucker, I feel it may be world beating.

Maybe so. But in pop psychology it's also often said that beautiful people are more successful and more popular (not saying I agree!) so it is not only the beauty industry that are responsible.

It may be a little cynical to say that all salons or clinics are mercenary and take people's money for no benefit. Today there are some lovely treatments available which are not too invasive and have a noticably beneficial effect. And actually I've been taught to take a more hollistic approach to the treatments I recommend. I would only recommend something if I believed it would benefit someone. It is certainly true though that some people are just in it for the money and they don't care what they're doing as long as they get your cash. This kind of thing is evident in clinics like Transform.

Anyway, I've gone off topic somewhat but I do believe you can find people who care about their clients and patients and what the result is.

In the grand scheme of things the number of people having cosmetic surgery is still very small.

I have 2 male friends that are whinge about their "moobs" - they are both metrosexual types that subscribe to countless glossy fashion mags. Unsurprisingly all the men I know that would rather read political/angling/car/computer mags and decent books couldn't give a tinker's fart about their "moobs".

Either you buy into this stuff or you don't - there seems to be very little grey area.

I think it is very telling how the choice of cosmetic surgery differs from one nation to another.
Apart from the US Britain seems to be quite unique in its obsession with breasts. In Brazil we'd be discussing giant arse implants. The French prefer their boobs petite.
When you view the cosmetic surgery industry on a global scale and see how it markets itself according to each culture it amazes me that women don't see how they are just being sold a targeted manufactured ideal.

The Elizabethans coated their faces in arsenic. The Chinese bound their feet. Humans do extraordinary things in pursuit of concepts of beauty. It is just fashion.
The businesses to get into for the next 20 years are breast implant and tattoo removal I reckon.

'In the grand scheme of things the number of people having cosmetic surgery is still very small.'

Most people who have had surgery don't talk about it though so it's impossible to know. I think more people have surgery than ever before simply because it's more accessible (rightly or wrongly).

Most people wear make up or have their hair coloured or highlighted and like to buy nice clothes - it would seem that most people buy into it to some degree, would you not agree with that? Isn't that a grey area?

Tattoo removal - good point, that was another big fashion a decade or so ago. There again, most men I knew couldn't give a shit but women went into it big time believing it made them more attractive.

We do this to ourselves.

And we do it to each other.

My sil-to-be has decided to go natural. She said the hardest thing was getting used to the idea that hair growing in armpits isn't actually intrinsically disgusting.

A lot of people will tell you it is of course, but it's just hair....in your armpit.

I'm afraid I dont really buy the ethical plastic surgeon/beautician concept (with the obvious exception of medically required reconstruction). The industry is making people feel better who would not have felt bad in the first place without the industry. In general you don't get brownie points for solving a problem you created in the first place.

The reason the thread is about implants primarily, is because I started it as a reaction to the current PIP scandal.

Everyone is of course at liberty to broaden it out and include other areas.

In answer to your point Entropy, yes individual choices are an intrinsic part of what creates aculture which then encourages others to follow suit, but what creates those initial individual choices is a cynical, money-making generalised culture that seeks to objectify women to make money from them.

There are deliberate marketing strategies to CREATE the perception of need out of thin air.