Q: Breast Implants Safe? Plastic Surgeon: Of Course (What else would he say!)
The New York Times recently came out with a Plastic Surgeon Q&A. (I have noticed that the New York Times in general seems to think breast implants are a safe choice.)
The average person would have been snowed by the Q&A, particularly when Dr. Zenn said that “saline and silicone breast implants are equally safe”, and that they only need to be replaced 35% of the time. What??? Even breast implant manufacturers admit that breast implants need to be replaced every 10 years or so (apparently the good doc’s throwing away the package insert without reading it).
Removed silicone breast implant. (Photo by Lisa Bennett)
And as for saline and silicone breast implants being “equally safe”….I would totally agree. AVOID like the plague.
New York Times, just because a doctor says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. You should know better.
~Kacey
Wow…if you guys haven’t gone to see all of the comments on this article on the NY Times website, you should. I can’t believe the comments, I’m sure the NY Times and Dr. Zenn did NOT expect that.
Comment by Krista — June 20, 2008 @ 11:45 am
For me, it has always been a question of “cosmetics” and (dare I say it) “sanity”.
I have NEVER liked “sili-boobs”, as I call them (a deliberate play-on-words, because mostly “silly boobs” are the ones getting them). Not only do they indicate that the women acquiring them have some serious “image” issues about themselves, but the simple fact that implants more often than not distort and misshape the breasts’ own natural sculpting & behaviors. Most men seem to be either unable to tell the difference or simply don’t care, but I can spot the fake ones from orbit about 90-95% of the time, and they all share one thing in common: they give me a “queasy” feeling everytime I see them.
Just as with the “pubic hair” issue (which I’ve just recently commented on), I am at a loss to understand where this social/societal obsession with mammoth mammaries stems from. Unlike most men (at least according to all we see & hear), I have never been a huge admirer of D+ sized breasts… not to say that I don’t find a number of them appealing, but I have always gravitated more toward something smaller and more proportional with a woman’s body — I even often find ‘near-flat’ displays on a woman’s chest have particular charms! So why always this focus on “bigger is better” or “bigger is more desirable” where it involves the feminine torso? And to shove questionable foreign materials inside one’s self in order to achieve those objectives should be cause for alarm, not just concern. (Granted, it’s not quite as disturbing as guys who submit themselves to ‘penile implants’, but there’s still very little difference in the concept.)
Now, I draw a “gray area” where it concerns the issues of breast “reconstruction” after mastectomy, and I might even be willing to give a little leeway in cases where the goal is “symmetry”, where one breast is considerably smaller than her companion. But as a general rule, I just wish women would recognize the natural beauty they possess “individually” and stop trying to conform to some “collective” idea as to what is beautiful and what ain’t, especially if it involves an “invasive surgical procedure”.
Comment by F1rst Kiss — June 20, 2008 @ 5:01 pm