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?

I never had any desire to smoke, even though I was the odd one out among friends.

I'm trying to illustrate the point that, actually, people are capeable of making their own choices, they haven't necessarily been influenced by society or what they think expectations of society are. I really don't care what other people think of my body but I do care how I feel. As I said earlier - my stomach isn't perfect but I'm not going to have a tummy tuck because it isn't important to me.

TBH perception I think it is naive to assume that people make decisions from entire free will uninfluenced by the society they live in.

I challenge you to find a single woman who being dissatisfied with their droopy boobs post child raising has chosen to have them removed, rather than plumped. Or someone with excess skin on their belly post pregnancy who has opted to have implants to stretch out the skin and make it plump rather than have it removed.

It is the same as the reasons why many white women use machines and chemicals to make their skin browner, and many Asian women use chemicals to lighten their skins. You will rarely see an Asian woman darkening her skin or a British white woman trying to bleach her skin even whiter.

I agree that nurture does have an influence on how people think but it's equally naive not to be able to see that some people see things one way and some people another and it isn't always about conforming.

Well you see there's an interesting one - I am very white. I like myself white and have no desire to make myself brown. I don't get tanning of any sort.

Am horrified that there are helmets to make babies heads round!

Can anyone explain what the difference to society is between me wearing a wonderbra and me having an uplift? Bearing in mind that my boobs used to look as they do now sans wonderbra.

It seems to me that your beef is nothing to do with my cleavage, and everything to do with the media coverage of ample boobs. In which case; catwalk models - HELLO???

Has anyone linked to this site yet?

And YANBU, OP, natch

PacificDogwood - my boobs look similar to many of the pictures shown there.

perception - you are kind of missing the point. If you were truly acting under free will you would be considering whether this season you might dye your skin green, or whether a fetching shade of silver might suit you better. Instead, your only realistic choices are between tanning and keeping your skin naturally pale. Those are the options that are presented to you by society, and your 'free' choice is severely limited by a natural desire to conform. That is why Asian women may bleach their skin rather than tan it. Their 'choice' is dictated by the culture they live in.

florrie - The difference is the surgical procedure, the foreign object implanted under your skin that carries a health risk, and the fact that you cannot reverse it without more major surgery. hth

Yes in this country many people think it's unattractive to be pale but it doesn't bother me so I've not 'bought into' that.

I don't actually have a natural desire to conform - actually I conform less than most people.

I asked a different question, thistledew. I'm not going to invite anyone into my bedroom to feel me up. What difference does my need to wear a supportive bra or not make to society?

To be fair soutty, I can understand wanting your tits to be how they were pre-kids.
I can see how upsetting it would be if you had perky breasts before, and they change a lot, or get a lot saggier etc.
I am pretty lucky in that mine didn't change much (although if I had another child, who knows).
Pert breasts are really nice, of course they are.
I suppose it is down to just how much nicer, or how much it matters to go to the extent of surgery.
Tbh, if I had got very "empty" looking boobs, just possibly I can imagine wanting an uplift (if that just involves tightening the skin) but I the idea of having implants just horrifies me.

I remember thinking my mum's boobs were not that nice when I was a kid too, but I think I thought that about all the naked breasts I saw. When you are a child, tits are usually just a bump under someones jumper, so to see them in the flesh is a bit disturbing maybe.
Also, everything about being older is a bit gross to kids. Less than perfectly smooth skin, crows feet, grey hair. All of it, but that does wear off as you grow up I think.

Everyone has a natural desire to conform. Otherwise we'd all just shit in the street and wear tins of beans for shoes.

I am starting to think that the implant thing has nothing to do with size and everything to do with youth. The more women I see with terrifying botox faces, the more I realise we as a society are obsessed with trying to stay young-looking. Me too. I am 29 this year and I'm already scared of looking old.

florrie I think the question has been answered. One individual choosing to smoke or not makes no difference to the tobacco industry, but each individual choice to do so adds up to generation after generation of teenagers getting addicted.

Please can anyone tell me if having implants means you can do a breast check/selfexamination for potential lumps/tumours as effectively as without implants? What I mean is could a tumour be hidden behind an implant that you would otherwise feel/be able to detect without?

The major issue has to be that it is surgery and a foreign object inside a person's body. Many people are going to find that quite horrifying and not understand how people can want to walk around with something inside them that a. their body may make an attempt to reject at some point, leading to problems and b. will start to leak at some point over a woman's life unless she has repeat surgery.

Clearly people who have prosthetics placed in them are happy to have them and be able to feel them inside them, so what seems very extreme to me is similar to mascara or hair dye to them, as they have said on this thread. I think it is hard to understand each other's feelings on this, because they are so much at odds.

I think you're right about it being more about wanting to look youthful, yellowraincoat. And the over-botoxed faces do look frightful.

Thats a good point yellowraincoat. My SIL has been having botox for a few years now, and at first it made her look younger. Now she is starting to look a bit odd and frozen.
The thing is, you will get older. You will look older. You just have to care about it less, and care about other things more I guess.

It would be nice if we could get to a stage where we could accept that our boobs will sag and we will get wrinkly and to not judge ourselves or others on that. If you compare pictures of Brigette Bardot when she was young and now, it is sort of scary. I mean, she was so beautiful and now she looks like (and is!) an old woman. Totally respect her for not having anything done, but we as a society (and I'll hold my hands up and say I personally) don't think she looks good. It's hard for me to accept that one day I will look like that too.

A v interesting thread and I absolutely support all those who've said 'isn't it awful that women feel they need to do this'. However, understanding that/agreeing on an academic level is one thing and 'feeling' it is quite another. If I'm really really honest, I'd have one like a shot if it weren't for the risks (as it is though, I can't help thinking of the possibility that I might be the person who has an adverse reaction to GA and dies on the table leaving her DC to grow up knowing their DM died because she wanted bigger breasts, so surgery is out of the question as far as I'm concerned).

But, if you were to tell me there was a pill that would give me a B cup (actually even an A cup) without any adverse side effects I'd be all over it. It's just one of those things that has bothered me my whole life: wrinkles, wonky nose ? those things I can deal with, but having virtually no boobs makes me feel unfeminine. I'm not even interested in perfect breasts, just breasts. Dresses, for example, on the whole look a bit daft without any breasts to put in them. Call it societal pressure but that's the way it is for me at least.

It's interesting how with faces, these very weird, unnatural looks have spread. I suppose that they all see, say for example in LA, these older women with very plumped up faces and that becomes their new 'normal'. But of course to us, they look alien.

I guess if we went back in time with a full face of make up, people might think we looked hilarious. But to us, it's just how we look now.