am i letting down the sisterhood to want cosmetic surgery?

[AvaGardner]

I have decided, after breast-feeding two children, to have a breast augmentation operation. i consider myself a feminist, and am raising my daughters to consider themselves beautiful on the inside and out, whatever their shape. i do not want giant barbie boobs, but a b cup to make me feel a bit better about myself. i'm 39 and have two very tired and shrivelled aa cups which i would rather do something about than feel a bit sad every time i get out of the shower and see myself.

my sister and my mother think i'm having a mid-life crisis and that i'm letting down the sisterhood. all the discussion boards where i have sought advice or ideas seem to feature mainly very young girls having very big breasts inserted in order to fit an ideal.

i'd really welcome your thoughts. i am feeling very conflicted and sad about this. i would like to do this for myself, but i feel somehow like i'm letting the side down or doing something trivial and slightly seedy.

SWC please do not either put words into my mouth, or patronise me.
I am not some silly airhead who has been fed a line about what female beauty should be like, and feels i should conform to it.
You don't have the monopoly on what is right in this issue though you think you do!

I think anyone who is honest- and I mean honest- would say that certain body shapes and proportions look better than others. If you want to look at a pair of breasts and say that the saggy, waist length, flat ones look as good as smaller pert ones then that's up to you- but I don't think you would be being honest. In the same way that man with a toned stomach looks better than one with a huge floppy beer gut.

If you go back to Roman and Greek times, the female form has been celebrated in sculpture and art and what was deemed beautiful has changed little. This is nothing to do with what men want or how women feel they should look.

I am lucky in that I have breasts that I am happy with- they are pert and firm. if they had been ravaged by child birth/feeding and i was unhappy with them then I might have them fixed, the same way that I had my teeth fixed, and my mole removed off my face; noting to do with how i feel i should conform; everything to do with how I like to look, for me.

suntan spot on. maybe those women are just being brainwashed into that- in order to please men.

if there is pressure on women to have it and they are encouraged to believe they can't be happy without it then yes, that definitely is a feminist issue. The fact that it is not always done safely (I posted further down about MIL's nextdoor neighbour and the implant slipping out of place) is most definitely a feminist issue.

seth- how on earth can the failure of an op be a feminist isssue? you really have lost me there.

Every single operation has a risk factor and a failure rate- your neighbour was unlucky and maybe had a poor surgeon.

Hair dyes can cause a reaction is some people- so can make up.
Does that make using them a feminist issue?

I think you need to get your logic sorted!

Haven't read the entire thread, but have you considered one of those bras that enlarge your breast size? Seems a bit less drastic, and you could get on with it quietly without it being a big deal to your kids.

Also, can I add that boobs take a while to decide what they're doing after BFeeding, anyway. You might feel differently in a few months.

thanks purple - i do feel strongly that seeking intervention to regain something you have lost is quite different from seeking to gain something you have never had.

you could make anything a feminist issue though; desire new car? thats you wanting to keep up with men. want a promotion - you feel inadequate next to men.

we all care about our image. if we didn't we'd all be grossly overweight, stinking blobs who just eat all the time.

allocation of resources in medicine, levels of risk considered acceptable, can be a feminist issue. nothing wrong with my logic.
hairdyes and make up are part of the same continuum, as I have said higher up the thread.

This is an excellent book, you should read it if you have trouble seeing the issue - it will take you through the arguments in more detail.

yup, MIL's neighbour was unlucky - to have breast cancer in a society which values women's looks to the extent that she felt she had no choice but to have the surgery but didn't offer her the option of decent surgery that actually worked.
MIL regards herself as very fortunate to have had her cancer at a time when there was less pressure to have the reconstruction and hence she has lived since her mastectomy in the 70s without having to worry about it, rather than having to go for regular replacements of the implant.

its not always about pressure. who is saying to cancer survirors that they must instantly book the op. no one. its about what they as individuals want

if someone scratches my car and i take it to the garage to get it repainted is that also a feminist issue?

seth that post comes over as warped and cyncial.
I cannot believe that you are so condemning of women who have had acancer and have chosen to have reconstruction and I feel positively angry with you for implying they are some kind of half-wits who do so to conform to someone else's idea of accpetability.

Losing a breast must be devastating. I find it hard to accept that, given the choice, a woman would prefer to live with one breast, than a reconstruction.

Oftem the medical profession will do it at the same time to make the whole process easier- but they will also allow a woman time to delay and choose.

I had a friend die from secondary cancer at 51 after fighting breast cancer for 6 years. She had a post-surgery reconstruction. I find it insulting that you believe that she, and women like her, did so because of pressure, not because they wanted a better quality of life.

I don't want to read the book you mention simply because at 55 i know what my values are and I spent a lot of my teens and 20s thinking about and living feminism- probably before you were born- and i simply have a very different view on it to you.

agree 100% purplepeony

do stop projecting, PurplePeony, I haven't condemned anyone. Can you please read my posts properly and try to argue with what I have actually said rather than your erroneous ideas of what I have said?

I really enjoyed the beginning of this thread
it was respectful, supportive and informative

any chance of it not becoming a bigger slanging match?

great posts seth and smallwhitecat
good luck op

I say go for it! I felt exactly the same after having my second child. My breasts, if you can call them that, looked horrendous. I got really down about it to be honest and couldn't bare to look at them. I went on to have implants and was delighted with the results. It improved my self confidence no end. I must admit my parents were absolutely horrified at the thought of me having a boob job and assumed that only tarty girls had it done. Do not take any notice of all these so called "feminists". It is your body and your choice and you do no need them replaced after 10 years, they are supposed to last a life time or at the very least 20 years if there are no problems. I incidently have never had any problems with mine and you can barely see the scars even. Nobody I meet realises they are fake unless I tell them and then they are surprised.

If you want to do this for yourself then go for it!!!!!

thefarmerhasawife - and did you immediately start obsessing about your nose or similar after the op or did you just enjoy the renewed self ocnfidence and get on with your life?

No not at all was just happy to have nice breasts. I've had no further surgery and have no wish to either.

Hope that helps!

Seth i am not imagining this
MIL's neighbour was unlucky - to have breast cancer in a society which values women's looks to the extent that she felt she had no choice but to have the surgery but didn't offer her the option of decent surgery that actually worked.
MIL regards herself as very fortunate to have had her cancer at a time when there was less pressure to have the reconstruction and hence she has lived since her mastectomy in the 70s without having to worry about it, rather than having to go for regular replacements of the implant.

What you say about your MIL neighbour is that she felt pressurised by society to have a reconstruction, and was then unlucky enough to have one that was not of good quality.

What I did, and still do, take issue with, is your assumption that all women are a gullible, for want of a better word, as that woman and have surgery not because they choose it, but because it is soemhow expected of them, or forced on them by doctors.

I remember the days when women had no choice or chance of reconstruction as my mother has friends in their 80s who had breasts removed.

I think it is nothing short of wonderful that the NHS has doctors and funds to provide what is yes, a cosmetic operation, for women who have lost a breast. I think those skilled drs would be highly insulted if they heard your ideas about how you tink women are pressurised into having reconstructions.

I wonder if you have actually met anyone apart from this person, who has had cncer and a reconstruction?

If you think of all the millions of women who have breast cancer- some of them having the finest brains in the world- ( cancer isn't choosy)can you really be saying they are brainwashed into having this done?

I think if you want to continue the topic of cancer and reconstruction it would be better to join a breast cancer site and talk to real women who can say how they feel.

i also say go for it. I've always hated mine (overdeveloped too quickly so stretch marked from age 13) and 17 mos BFing haven't helped matters much. i am definitely considering it but would need the whole uplift thing, which is a more serious undertaking, with more scarring.

that said, i don't approve of my cousin who, at 16, had implants to "even out" her supposedly very slightly lopsided chest, or even my other cousin who in her late 20s had implants to go up two sizes.

i think it's fine though for "valid reasons" of sag shock and horror.

Hello everyone

Thanks for continuing the debate! I feel a bit uncomfortable about the tension that has crept into some of the to and fro on here. You all make valid points, and I'm impressed by the level of the discussion.

One of the things I was hoping to explore by posting was your take on whether I might have been subconsciously pressured into wanting to do this.

I genuinely have never felt that I needed to do it to conform with expectations. I'm used to fixing the things in my life that need to be fixed: I left a job I hated and trained for one I love, I walked out of a crap marriage and lived alone with my daughter (DIY books and all!) until fortuitously meeting the man I am now married to and love very much. My elder daughter was bullied at school: I researched what to do, talked to parents and teachers and advisors and convened meetings until a course of corrective action was taken. It is in this spirit that I am coming at cosmetic surgery. My very small boobs, of which I have been proud most of my life, now look like withered old lady boobs. I'd like to fix that, because I'm only 39, not 69. Because of the reaction I got from family, and the startling web debate I found on other sites among very young impressionable girls, I thought I would seek opinions on a site I respect.

Seth, or maybe it was whitecat, you were making a lot of sense to me until you mentioned the broken nose thing, and then the cancer reconstruction. I just can't buy that fixing a broken nose is down to societal oppression. And having seen my mother go through cancer and reconstruction I can assure you that the latter was a major comfort and step towards embracing life again after confronting possible death.

where is the condemnation in that post PurplePeony?
and I think you are confusing the idea that everyone (yes, men as well as women) are subject to social and cultural influences, as well as practical limitations that constrain their choice, with 'brainwashing'.
We are all the products of our environmental influences - feminists included. To point out that some of those influences are sexist and harm women is not the same as saying that women are brainwashed fools.

sethWe are all the products of our environmental influences - feminists included. To point out that some of those influences are sexist and harm women is not the same as saying that women are brainwashed fools.

you will have to start another thread then for that, as frankly I cannot see the difference- that seems to be precisely what you are saying!
women will only be harmed if they allow themselves to be.

I agree, go for it if you really want to. I had mine done after 2 DC's. I'd always felt dissatisfied with my small A cup breasts, all the women in my family have much larger boobs and I felt they were out of proportion with the rest of my body.

They swelled to a fabulous D cup while I was BFing and for the first time I felt great about them, and it felt like my body was in proportion at last. Then when I stopped, I was left with absolutely nothing there, just 2 shrivelled sacks with a nipple and I simply couldn't find a bra to fit at all.

My mum and sister were not very supportive at first, but as I'd always worn super padded bras they didn't realise the full extent of the damage. They help to disguise your figure but don't make you feel any better about yourself when you know that the bra cups are empty! When my sister caught a peak in a shop changing room, she was quite shocked and said she could understand why I wanted to go ahead with the surgery.

I would say do your research first, make sure you go to a reputable company and if possible, speak to your GP for a recommendation. I did this and my GP was very sweet and understanding and recommended the local consultant who does a lot of reconstruction post-cancer surgery.

2 years on, I am really happy with my new boobs and feel so much more confident about my body. Clothes hang better and buying underwear is now fun, rather than a depressing chore. I would never consider having anything else done. The decision was totally my own, my husband insisted he was happy with my depleated shape but he now admits he does like my improved shape!

Good luck with your decision.

AvaGardner - yes it was me who talked about broken noses and breast reconstructions. I did not bring them up; I responded to someone (it might have been SunGirlTan asking if they were also feminist issues.)
My point was not that people who choose reconstructions (in either case) are wrong; I don't think they are, or rather, that that is for anyone else to say, and it is great that they have the option. It was that these things do impact unequally on women and as such they are part of the same, larger, issue, that women are judged by their appearance in a way that men aren't, and consequently end up feeling they have to do things which frankly aren't fun and aren't 100% safe. They should be safer than they are; there shouldn't be any cases of someone having an implant slipping round because she's unlucky enough to get a 'bad surgeon'. All choices about appearance are made in a context, and that context is different for men and women; if a young actress had a broken nose like Stephen Fry, there is nothing wrong with her having it fixed, but there is something wrong with her having less choice than she would have done if she was a man. With regard to post-operative breast reconstruction, it is great that women have the option of having their breasts restored to make them feel sexy again; what is not great is that our society (at the moment) puts so much emphasis on breasts that a woman feels she can't be sexy without them.
Does that make any more sense? I've been posting more concisely than usual this morning because I am busy today (and am going out soon anyway).
sorry this is a bit of a hijack about your thread; I was responding to posters asking if I thought these things were feminist issues, but they're not really germane to your big question.

I just think changes in breast shape and perkiness it part of getting old, and that's what scares me. It's more of an ageist issue than feminist issue. We are all scared of getting old.

I have been an AA - B - A - B size over the years and pregnancies, but there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that I would get an augmentation. I would feel very uncomfortable having something foreign permanently in my body, everytime I'd touch them, have sex, whatever, I'd always think they are not mine and I would feel artificial, 'plastic'. But that's my own feelings. In terms of feminism, I do think that many women especially younger women get augmentations because they want to attract more male attention. But you are 39 and sound like a grounded person. You can make up your own mind.

I do think though that reconstructive surgery, because of an accident or illness, is a completely different issue. And a very difficult one to discuss, and it shouldn't be discussed here.

And I also think that taking care of how you look, your hair, skin, make up, exercising, eating healthy food, etc is a very different issue. Plastic surgery is 'permanent' it changes the form of your your body, using medical procedures. It's dangerous, it's risky.