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Cosmetic Surgery - One Male's Perspective.

Looking through my national newspaper this morning, I was only moderately surprised to be confronted with yet another enviably large advertisement offering women the latest and greatest in surgical improvements. Breast 'enhancement', tummy tuck, lip augmentation and the newest ultrasonic liposuction. All this and more from a whiz-bang laser-med outfit that claims to have won several consumers' choice awards. Where have I been? When did surgery become a consumer item?

Breast surgery is not an enhancement. It is a replacement. They cut your breast open, remove what nature has given you, and replace it with some bouncy chemical jelly, that, god willing it doesn't burst open inside you and kill you, will jiggle almost naturally, providing your boyfriend/husband/lover with endless minutes of synthetic joy. Until the day arrives, and it will of course, that the rest of your body begins to lag noticeably behind the amazingly long half-life of your fabulous new implants.

I've often wondered what moves people to such dangerous acts of vanity. Now before you dismiss me as some holier-than-thou, leftist, socialist, broccoli-munching health freak, I want to set the record straight. I'm just as vain as the next person, possibly more so. I'll sit in front of a mirror and fuss over my hair, my tie, my nearly-but-not-quite-shaven Brad-Pittian stubble or whatever, for just as long as my girlfriend will take to apply a wedding-day-quality makeup job. I know what pants of mine make me look fat, which ones make that nice full-basket look, and am aware that vertical stripes are more slimming than horizontal ones. But would I let some quack semi-surgeon sleazebag slit my penis open to make it appear fuller and longer, even if he could promise me that I would have a better than 75% chance of not losing sensation in it. Not freaking likely. So what gives girls? What is going on here? I can only assume that there is some kind of double standard at work.

I truly sympathize with anyone who has suffered an undesired surgery resulting from breast cancer, or any other genuine medical crisis. I can understand that coping with cancer, as well as the attendant emotional fallout of a radical or partial mastectomy is not an easy thing. This is not the same. I am talking about pure vanity and nothing else, and a decision that has health implications at least potentially equal to that.

Many women I have spoken to admit that they simply don't like their breasts, and feel that the technological ability to alter them is within their grasp, so why not? Why not indeed? Maybe because it's a monstrous perversion of nature, not to mention a world-class deception, based on the idea that you can fool all the people, at least some of the time if you've got enough money?

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