On July 16, Jezebel.com revealed the winner of its un-retouched magazine cover contest: Redbook’s July’s cover of country music superstar, Faith Hill.

Over the course of last week, outrage over the magazine’s Photoshop efforts to improve on an exceptionally beautiful 39 year-old mother of three grew into a major media storm. This was fueled by:

1) Redbook’s hypocrisy. Redbook’s mission is to be the “total-life guide for every woman blazing her own path through adulthood and taking on new roles — wife, mom, homeowner — without letting go of the unique woman she’s worked so hard to become.” But Redbook has shown itself to be part of the general conspiracy to perpetuate a fantasy ideal of feminine beauty, which tells women that only unattainable, cookie-cutter fantasies are good enough, that not even Redbook values “unique.” If even Faith Hill doesn’t make the grade, what hope do the rest of us have?

2) The annotated sordid details of what exactly Redbook found was wrong with Faith Hill’s original photo.

There is a silver lining in all this: The incident has shown that we are not all jaded and blinded by the air-brushed images bombarding us every day, that some of us can still recognize and value genuine, natural beauty, and that it’s possible to challenge what Jezebel.com calls the “cover lie,”
of which all of our popular culture is guilty.

Congratulations, Jezebel, on a job well done!

It’s a crime! First the silicone implant manufacturers convince the FDA to put a dangerous product on the market and then women murder and steal to get them!

It’s a crime that women with implants can’t get insurance. If the product is so safe, health insurers would pay to put them in and take them out. Maybe they are on to something by not covering women.

But some women don’t get the message that it’s a crime against women that these substandard products are readily available. Women don’t see the slippery slope to poverty when they have to pay for the rest of their lives to get their implants put in, taken out, put in, etc.

Instead they commit crimes like murder and embezzlement to get the money for the implants that are a crime in themselves.

In today’s Miami Herald, Dr. Carlos Wolf says that “Implants shouldn’t affect your ability to breast-feed.”

Yeah, yeah. My doctor said the same thing to me and I could not breast feed. How can this supposedly responsible medical professional make the statement that the questioner WILL NOT have a problem? How does he know? Has he examined this woman? Is she is patient? Does he have the miracle guarantee that she will absolutely NOT have issues?

I love that he is a facial plastic surgeon… He must be an expert on women’s breasts, right?

This poor woman is 27 and she will trust Dr. Wolf’s advice. SO sad to me.

When I got my implants, my doctor said there was a very small chance I might have trouble breastfeeding, not that I wouldn’t be able to at all. Which was the case. He said the biggest problem might be less sensation. I didn’t even want kids at the time, let alone breast-feed them, so what did I care about a little lost sensation?

Well, I thought back on this after my daughter was born and was starving. The doctor said it was all in my head. The pediatrician declared I could breast feed while grabbing my breast and squeezing it while I wrenched in pain. The lactation specialist said I needed a pump, but even that could not pull the milk from my implanted breasts. And my husband said I needed to relax and that my guilt over the implants was the problem.

All the while my daughter was starving and I felt like damaged goods. What good was I that I couldn’t even feed my own baby girl? That was a horrible part of becoming a mother: To experience failure so early in her life, to know I made a horrible choice that affected my baby and our future. Guilt? Yes, hell yes.

Denise over at BlogHer for one week kept track of how often she saw women talking in negative terms about their bodies, their clothing, and food. She came across 72 posts by women that fit this description, and only one by a guy. I am not surprised.

I have three teenage daughters. I listen to how they talk about their bodies and think they are fat. They are NOT, so this kind of talk is scary to me. Having grown up feeling like that myself, I want so much for them not to go through what I did. With all I have shared with them about my body image issues, implants and weight, when they grab their perfect female bellies and say, “Oh, I am so fat,” I know they cannot hear my message. I just hope somewhere in there, they are getting it.

Our values are expressed in — as well as magnified and exaggerated by — our popular culture. TV programming, movies, music videos, magazines, etc., almost always tell us that the only way women can be attractive is to be sexy and beautiful. Even the amazingly accomplished women characters we see on such shows as Gray’s Anatomy or CSI are all slim and stunning. If these are the cultural cues that bombard our daughters everyday, it’s no wonder they are having body image issues.

This is a huge change since my days playing Erin on The Waltons. I and the other actors playing the Walton brood spent very little time worrying about our looks (until the pressures of Hollywood got to us as we got older). We ran around in depression-era clothes. Off the set, we were trying to be normal kids. And while we were all cute enough (I thought), we were not uniformly gorgeous.

These days, even on kids’ channels like Disney or Nickelodean, the ‘tween stars wouldn’t be caught without makeup, and we get the idea that when they are off the set, they spend a lot of time working out and conferring with stylists. Then we hear about their struggles to transition to adult roles: Think cute, normal teen girl Hillary Duff suddenly 20 pounds lighter and acutely bonier appearing in videos steamy enough to give Madonna a run for the money. Or the very talented JoJo, a normal attractive teenager in the movie Aquamarine, but who emerges a year later in a music video in tight clothes, heavy make-up and big hair. The message to girls? To be a successful adult, this is the only path available to you.

Denise’s informal survey was prompted by the fact that she recently read Courtney Martin’s book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. Hmm, I’m going to have to check it out. Anyway, the book made her second-guess everything she’s said and done with her own daughters.

Denise, I feel the same way sometimes, but there’s no need. It’s normal for girls to worry about their looks. But if your daughters are also worrying about over-scheduling, then obviously, you are trying to provide other things from which they can get a healthy sense of self-worth, and that’s the best we moms can do!

Hang in there. Together we can get through it all!

In a recent article about breast implants that appeared on TheBostonChannel.com, a woman named Jen says:

“I just wanted to look good again. I wanted to feel that feeling I had when I was younger — just for myself. Not for anybody else but myself.”

Jen is a make-up artist and mother of three.

Whenever I read stuff like this, it makes me wonder. I think: But you ARE a mother, you ARE older. What part of you doesn’t accept that? And what would your life be like if you could accept it? You are not younger. You are YOU, now, a mom — older, wiser and probably wonderful and creative. In the article, Jen goes on to say she feels the pressure, so why not call a spade a spade and realize it is just that - pressure? It’s not reality or who she really is.

It scares me that women are in such denial of who they are and not embracing themselves. Maybe Jen’s attempt to recapture “that feeling I had when I was younger” came from accepting what she was back then rather than wishing to be someone she’s not.

Houston Chronicle

BusinessWeek

Make Me Heal is an insidious website. By its title, you think it’s for people trying to recover from something terrible. Actually, it’s a site that promotes cosmetic plastic surgery and anti-aging treatments. So what it actually helps you with is recovery from your self-perceived ugliness from not having perfect features and the perfect figure, or from plain ageing. I hate to drive traffic to this site by pointing to it from this blog, but I believe our community needs to understand what kind of twisted thinking has infiltrated our culture. So here’s the link.

I did come across an interesting post about Cate Blanchett, though, who has spoken out against teen plastic surgery and against cosmetic surgery in general. Here are some highlights:

“It’s a big difference women in their 60s or 70s finally deciding to get their eyes done. Who knows what you’re going to think? But when you’ve got an 18-year-old daughter who says ‘Mummy can I get a boob job?’ and you go ‘Sure honey’.”

“I mean their bodies haven’t even finished evolving. The fact that you’ve got a magazine, you know all these magazines for teenage girls about consuming and they’re so fragile. I’ve got sons. I don’t know what I’d do if I had a daughter.”

“I see someone’s face, someone’s body who’d had children and I think they’re the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that?“

Bravo, Cate, for pointing out that plastic surgery in teens is frightening. Also, that these young girls are not done developing yet! A beautiful woman, in an industry that thrives on looks, sees the value of inner beauty and aging gracefully! Now if only we could get more actresses to be responsible, speak up and honor themselves and women…

I totally understand Cate’s fear of having girls and her relief at having boys. With all I have been through, I can relate. At one time, I hoped to have a boy too. Knowing what a girl can go through with body image, I thought I wouldn’t be able to deal. But the fates sent me a girl and my beautiful Sydnee was born.

I now have three teenage daughters, and believe me, there IS pressure to look a certain way. Even thought they don’t LIKE Britney or Lindsay, they still are exposed to these young celebrities just by growing up in America, and images contain subliminal messages about girls’ body image! MY girls have the benefit of my experience, but they still feel it. In a culture shaped by programs like Nip/Tuck and sites like Make Me Heal, it can be really hard to teach young girls the value in themselves. But it is so important.

Everybody should have a Jimmy. What I mean is that everybody should have a man in her life who follows the model that Jimmy created when I had breast cancer, bi-lateral mastectomies and countless reconstructive surgeries.

Jimmy is an ob-gyn and knows more about medicine than most men caught in the breast cancer spiral. That knowledge can be a curse because it made Jimmy worry in advance of every step we took, and we took every step together:

When they came to take me to the operating room for the first mastectomy, Jimmy was in my hospital bed with me, holding me and keeping me warm. We were comforting each other and the hospital staff was shocked.

We cried together after the surgery was over. We had been married 19 years and I was 43 years old and felt as though my body had been ravaged. It was 1983 and modified radical mastectomies provided the best chance for recovery. Jimmy convinced me that it didn’t matter to him as long as I was well and we could continue our lives together. I knew it mattered to him but my being alive mattered to him more. He was angry with me that I chose to go back for operation after operation. Still, he changed my bandages on a daily basis after one of the reconstructive surgeries using implants left me with an open wound. He understood my changing moods and encouraged me to get support. I encouraged him to get support. We listened to each other and got outside help. We’ve now been married 46 years and are closer than we ever were.

I’ve been healthy in between many surgeries and another bout with cancer (kidney) three years ago. And through each of my medical problems, there was Jimmy, strong and loving and suffering along with me. He made me stronger because I wanted to match his steadfastness and courage. We’ve spent a good many years of our marriage with teary eyes as I had one medical crisis after another. But crying together makes laughing together that much more wonderful.

Our story underscores the importance, almost the urgency of understanding partners throughout the breast cancer/reconstructive process. Many men, like Jimmy, don’t want their wives/partners to undergo surgery after surgery. Once they understand the risks of implants, men will often oppose their wives/partners getting them because of the risk to his loved one’s health.

Perhaps you should read this article about Mommy Makeovers, and how they account for a huge and rising segment of the breast implant market. Mommy Makevoers! A mommy is someone’s wife, someone’s mother, the center of her family. If her spouse knew the risk of implants, how could he ever let her get them?

Yes, everybody should have a Jimmy. Oh how I wish that could be.

Please share the story of the man in your life and how he reacted to your implants and the surgery required to get them.

Amazon has just begun selling “Two Small Voices,” the film that was done for Lifetime TV about the breast implant issue nearly nine years ago.

History:

At the time the movie was made and first released for TV, the manufacturers prevailed upon the network to change specific references to “the Meme,” an implant sold by Bristol Meyers and Dow Corning. They further required a five-minute tag done by Linda Ellerbe outlining the controversy about implants from a more pro-manufacturer point of view. That version of the movie has been seen around the world, many times, over the past many years.

Present Situation:

The version being sold on Amazon is the original version of the movie without the changes required by the manufacturers. It does not have the Linda Ellerbe tag either. It costs $9.99.

Although the movie is somewhat dated (it now costs nearly $15,000 to remove implants as opposed to the $5,000 number mentioned in the movie), it still is important for women considering implants to watch. Women need to know the history so that the history is not repeated. And the history is in that movie.

Kathleen Anneken and I kept the production of the movie a deep, dark secret for nearly a year until it was ready to be aired. We knew that the manufacturers would not have wanted it to be shown.

I am very pleased that the movie is available in its original form even though it’s a bit embarrassing for me to watch because I’m really not that fancy and aggressive and Kathleen was amazing and wonderful and a joy to work with from the day I met her.