| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Cosmetic surgery freaks me out. I read this article in George a while ago about a woman who was gonna have a face lift and they accidentally severed these nerves in her face and now she takes prescription painkillers 24-7 and can't leave her bedroom. She said 'They call it cosmetic surgery like it's not *surgery*. Things can go wrong and they do'. Also a friend of mine in Feb went in for a 'routine operation' to have his heart fixed from a birth defect that could lead to something later on. He wound up having 3 strokes on the operating table and now sits in a rehab center unable to talk or move with 'locked in syndrome'. I guess I can't imagine risking your life for something like smaller boobs. Plus, lets get real. The plastic surgery is something she can't afford and it's masking the real troubles in her life: a job she hates that screws with her self-esteem which she should leave and a boyfriend who after 3 years of living together just moved home to live with his parents (age 43 with 3 kids from a previous marriage) so he can 'save money so they can buy a house together'. He's told her he will never marry her, he does not want to have kids (she does) and he refuses to socialize with her friends or family or be part of her life though she is always giving and giving to him and his life and his kids and his family. For instance: for the past 2 years on her b-day she, I, her siblings and friends have all gone out for a big birthday dinner with her but the beau won't go because 'he doesn't like social situations'. Whatever. Of course she needs to get real about that relationship. So I see this whole plastic surgery thing as just a band-aid on all the wrong things in her life. In the past few months she's also spent $ on teeth whitening and cosmetic laser surgery (spider veins) which she didn't need and can't afford. It just really freaks me out and dismays me that she's ready to cut off her boobs rather than just look at what is really needing some change in her life. It sucks. I guess I can't stop her. But it still disturbs me. |
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anyway, your friend doesn't sound like she needs elective surgery. she needs to open up a can of whoop-ass on her stupid lout of a boyfriend. i can't imagine what kind of subzero self-esteem a person would have to possess to allow a man to run roughshod over her like that. she doesn't need the knife; she needs a good shrink. she may even need happy pills. getting one's tits lopped seems like just another brand of self-mutilation to me. it's assisted self-mutilation. somewhere deep in the convoluted morass of her internal psychology, she may be punishing the feminine side of herself, since it hasn't yet been successful in roping in Mr. Dream Date Ken. i don't know. it's a hard call. ultimately, there's probably precious little you can do to talk her out of it, if she's hell-bent on doing it. still, your concern is hardly misplaced. it IS disturbing & it's one hell of a creepy thing to watch a friend go through. |
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I read somewhere recently, apprarently the women who are having breast surgeries these days are above average...statistically, with education, careers and so forth. Since i have no idea what its like to have huge tits, i can empathize with someone who has a huge chest. Imagine all the stares, the stress on her back.....i read an account of a woman who got a breast reduction.....an essay, it sounded like a true relief for her........ |
but why anybody would want to have breast enlargement surgery, knowing how dangerous it is, is beyond me. a lot of women whose implants happened to have leaked now have compromised immune systems, are always sick, and miserable to boot. it just seems like a scheme on the part of plastic surgeons to trick people or something. remember though, that i live in granola utopia oregon where people don't bug out about their chest size like they might in some places |
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Apparently the women were really happy with it. In most cases they had some water drained afterward because they overestimated their "ideal" size. I don't know what I think about this stuff... Kinda depends on the motivation. If it's to reel in guys, its silly. Women with fine breasts making them monstrous doesn't make any sense. Then there's the men who get breast implants... |
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I really can't endorse cosmetic surgery unless you are deformed in some way or in an accident or something. Maybe I am lucky that I don't have anything about my appearance that I would change dramatically if I could, but maybe it's just that I'm not filled with self-loathing. And the idea of putting a syringe in your boobs AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Just change the phrase from 'adjustable breast augmentation' to adjustable penis augmentation. There was this little thing put just under the skin where you could poke it with a needle and not cause it to leak'. EEEEEEEEEEEEK. Sounds unbearable. And I do think breast augmentation is sad. Why can't people accept how they are? And of course the object is to attract men, no matter what anyone says I do believe at the end of the day, you don't let someone cut up your breast with a knife and fill them with a potentially deadly little packet of whatever so that you'll have bigger boobs for any other reason than you think men will be more attracted to you. And that because men will be more attracted to you, you will be a better person more worthy of love and more loved. Hey, maybe they are. But really this is a thing that just preys on I do think it has to do with women's collective low self-esteem. Maybe for some of them it cures their feelings of inadequacy, but it seems sad that can't be done non-surgically. And does it really last (bigger boobs and I'm a new person?) And Patrick is right, cosmetic surgery is unregulated so you can get a real hatchet job if you don't know what you're doing. It is scary to think about it. I wish I had that article from George. I know it had only one side but there was a sidebar which was really sad about a man whose wife gave him liposuction as a xmas gift and he died because the dr. didn't know he was taking out too much fat and blood. Just awful. On the other hand I do wish Tom much luck on his Fight Club career however. |
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anyway, Lady, I don't know what you're saying to your friend but I hope you're not nagging at her. whether she "realizes" what her "real problems" are or not is up to her and she won't do it any faster if you're standing there telling her how crazy she is for going under the knife. maybe her problem really Is that she's dissatisfied with her looks to the point that she can't imagian being happy the way she is now. maybe she's so unhappy with her looks that they impare every other aspect of her life. just telling her to "accept it" isn't going to do squat. you don't get over feelings like that just because someone tells you to. whether this makes her feel better or not, she'll have to find out for herself. I'm sure she'd appreaciate the support of a friend while she's going through all this. |
And once again, for the record, my friend is in no way ugly or deformed except in her own mind. If I had to pick a celebrity she reminds me of in appearance it would be Ileana Douglass (sp?), she is thin, big blue eyes, sexy, funny, with a good figure,... so though she may be really dismayed about her appearance she is the only one who thinks that she is ugly. The more I think about what is going on with her, I realise that asking me to be supportive as she wonders if she should spend money she doesn't have to have cosmetic surgery is like asking me to be supportive of an anorexic friend who thinks she needs to go on a diet. I support her, not her delusional thinking. So I'll suspect your 'ticked off feelings' have something do to with your own feelings on this topic which may be unrelated to my story. Or on something you're reading into my tedious overlong blather (I now would like to apologise to the comittee...) on the topic of cosmetic surgery which now that I really think about it really is only icing on the cake of why I'm upset. I got together with her roommate over the weekend who had guessed what was going on and was just as dismayed. She says my friend is a no bigger than a 36C. Not 'huge' by any means. All of her friends and family at this point are at various degrees of disturbed about her screwed up relationship, even her Mother started a conversation with me about it last month, telling me she was worried about her which totally shocked me. No one will say to her 'that guy treats you like dirt' because it would do no good. I've tried to ask her about why she likes being with him and when the topic gets to 'but what does he do to make you happy/to show you he cares' she just makes jokes and then changes the subject. It's sad. She won't give up the really painful things in her life because they are the devil she knows. Meanwhile I see them crushing her self-esteem ever further but don't know what I could do to help her. |
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