BOOBS! Please Weigh In (Or, it’s okay to be a B-cup! Really!)

I start my new job tomorrow, so today I took the liberty of watching a crap daytime TV show. The hottest topic: a website where women can get “free” breast implants. And I have something to say about that.

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If you have had a boob job, please understand that this is not a personal attack on you. It’s a free country. And if you’re an actress or model, I understand you’re under tremendous pressure to look a certain way. But these invasive procedures are being so aggressively marketed, and so many people are getting them, that it may be skewing our culture’s perception of what’s “normal.”

Case in point: I am a tall, slim size eight, and I wear a B cup. I am absolutely fine with that. Physiologically, a B cup looks normal on me. For other women with a curvier build, a D or E cup is “normal.” But our culture tells us a woman is supposed to have both—a slim body with huge boobs. That’s a body type that rarely occurs naturally. So now we have girls under 18 clamoring for boob jobs, and the reason most often given is “my self-confidence.” I will feel like more of a person if I have tits bigger than what I was genetically designed to have.

Enter the “charity” boob job. I won’t give the name of this website, but it was the brainchild of a guy who overheard a stripper complain she couldn’t afford the fake boobs so coveted by her profession. A collection was taken up among the guys at the bachelor party, and a web industry was born. On this site, women post pictures of themselves (sometimes quite racy) and an account of why they “need” a boob job. When willing men (who are complete strangers) send them a message, a dollar is deposited in their “account,” to be used toward a breast augmentation. The men also have the opportunity to send larger gifts. One girl bragged that it took her only four months of “chatting” with these fellas to raise $4,000 for her procedure. A married man in the audience justified his financing of other womens’ boob jobs by saying, “I’m safe at home with my wife and kids while I chat with these women.” (If I were that man’s wife, I would kick him clear into next week.). A psychologist on the program called this practice “a form of prostitution.”

I’m sure there’s not a woman reading this who wouldn’t like to change something about her body. So I’m not immune to the temptations of plastic surgery. But I really question the place that surgery has in our culture. Do you have a body part that’s truly malformed or unfunctional? Or does your happiness depend on looking one particular way? We are all going to get old one day and lose our looks. What’s on the inside of you? Why is our definition of beauty so narrow? And what about functionality? I promise you, my size Bs do everything they’re designed to do, include produce milk for my kids. The World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the wisdom of every traditional culture espouses the health benefits of breastfeeding. But if you have a boob job, you often cannot breastfeed.

Guys, I know you all like boobs. Fine. It’s how you are wired. But we don’t all have to have huge ones. (Those of you dating in LA might have a hard time finding a woman without a boob job.). But there’s got to be some of you who appreciate a woman’s body in its unaltered form. Girls? Guys? Weigh in, please!