Oh my goodness … I had forgotten what REAL BREASTS look like!! We have been so wrapped up in implanted breasts for so long … you just start to think that the norm is the rock-hard round grapefruit. But then, I stumbled across these on the Female Intelligence Agency’s Normal Breasts Photos Gallery: 

Reading the comments, it was nice to see that the website is having a POSITIVE impact on a lot of the young women who were considering augmentation. From the site they have discovered that they have “normal” beautiful breasts!

Please visit the gallery. There are many other photos. 

Thank you, Echidne of the Snakes, for showing me this! 

“My friends have done it and rave about it.”

“My friends look great, and it looks so easy.”

“Everyone is doing it, so it MUST BE SAFE.”

“I’m going to get it done too…”

This is the thinking process for so many people when it comes to cosmetic surgery. It leaves a lot of room for terrible things to happen. Case in point is Priscilla Presley, who ended up with with industrial-grade silicone in her face.

Priscilla, like so many of her social set, was taken in by Daniel Serrano, a handsome Argentinian who had somehow plugged into the Hollywood elite. Serrano, who turns out wasn’t even licensed to practice medicine in the US, provided what he claimed were miracle injections that worked better than Botox. According to TMZ,

Serrano was injecting industrial, low-grade silicone similar to what’s used to lubricate auto parts in Argentina into the faces of these women. Several women, including Shawn King, Larry’s wife, and Diane Richie, Lionel’s wife at the time, held injection parties in their homes, with Serrano needling them with the non-FDA approved drug that he had smuggled in to the U.S. He charged between $300 and $500 a pop.

The injections caused lumps, paralysis and even holes in the face. Serrano, subsequently dubbed “Dr. Jiffy Lube,” ended up in jail, but not before disfiguring many women.

What this story perfectly illustrates is how a herd mentality can take over when a cosmetic medical procedure that can have very serious side effects loses its social stigma. It can become widespread, and finally “fashionable and trendy.” I feel so much sympathy for Priscilla – it’s so hard to exercise your own judgment when the people around you and your social environment urge you to rush in. Under this kind of pressure, any thought of caution and due diligence very easily falls to the wayside.

That’s why the FDA’s decision to put silicone breast implants back on the market, charging women with informed consent, is such a crime. These days, if it were possible to have house parties for breast implants, believe me, they would be happening! In such an atmosphere, how many women, like Serrano’s poor victims, are falling into the herd mentality and consenting to this surgery with only their friends’ or doctors’ safety assurances? Too many, I’m afraid.

A few days ago a friend sent me a link to a cancer survivor’s blog and suggested that I might want to get involved. I did go and spend a good deal of time reading the blog posts and it stirred up my emotions.

Although I have empathy for these women, I am just in such a different place than they are right now. Looking back, I probably also struggled with feelings of “Why me?” and grieving over the loss of my breast. BUT… here I am 30 years later and I want to smack these gals for being consumed with that attitude.

Life does not stop because we lose a breast. It would be far worse to lose an arm, leg, an eye, or even your hearing.

I remember 30 years ago I was living in Manhattan and I had just gotten out of the hospital. I was on the bus going downtown to my bank, feeling oh so sorry for myself… There I sat, just having had major surgery, and NO ONE on the bus but me had the slightest idea of what I had been through.

I watched a blind man get on the bus with his guide dog, and he found the time on his watch with his fingers. Then I spotted one of the homeless beggars with no legs on one of those dollies pushing himself down the street with his hands.

At that moment I felt pretty damn lucky to have only lost a breast.

GOODNESS… I sure wish there was a way to make women wake up and realize that this BREAST issue is all fueled by media hype, implant manufactures, plastic surgeons, and obnoxious men that just want to look at big breasts.

For crying out loud, the ONLY REASON for breasts is to nurse babies… and if you don’t have a baby, why the hell do you need breasts?

Just to let you all know where I am coming from… I am a 30 year survivor of breast cancer. I was a 25-years old and not married when I was diagnosed and had a mastectomy. I did silicone reconstruction five years post-mastectomy and then had to deal with multiple surgeries and illnesses as a result of that choice. For the last 12 years I am back to living with one breast… and, yes, there are times when I find it difficult to obtain the look I want in clothes or bathing suits. And no, I will never wear a strapless gown again… BUT WHO THE HECK CARES? I have my LIFE! And a pretty darn happy one at that.

Over the last decade, every thing we’ve seen in the media - on TV, the news, reality shows, advertising, magazine covers, etc. - has depicted the extremely thin woman as being the norm.

Fortunately, it is becoming more evident in the last few months that society in general may be starting to revolt and declare that the waif with the voluptuous bosom is NOT the real American woman.

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I just read an article that was posted on medtrackalert.com, written by David Stanley, a community pharmacist for 15 years. The article points out that the Food and Drug Administration has responsibility for reviewing the safety of medications, but what will surprise most people is that until this year, there was never a requirement that a drug ever be studied again once it was approved for the market. This meant that the FDA had no way to address the safety concerns of medications or medical devices except to pull the product off the market.

Congress recently passed the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007. The new law gives the FDA the ability to order manufacturers to do post-approval clinical trials and to penalize them if they don’t follow through.

The FDA now has the authority to order changes in drug labeling so that doctors and the public will be informed sooner of potential risk factors.

The act will also establish an Internet database with information from all clinical trials that will be administered by the National Institute of Health. This database will be open to both researchers and the general public.

I have personal concern with the NIH data base. It is a fact that there are a zillion clinical trials that have been funded by manufacturers. The outcomes are often biased in favor of the manufacturers’ products. My fear is that this information might give the public a false sense of security when it comes to particular drugs and medical devices.

That being said, hopefully this new act will be a step towards getting the FDA back on track to protecting the consumer. SAFETY FIRST, before they put the FDA stamp of approval on a product!

I recently read a quote in the November issue of More magazine. “Almost 3/4 of cosmetic surgery is done on patients UNDER 50 years old.” This was a finding taken from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and comprehensive surveys conducted by Trend Sight Group.

This statement took me by surprise, as when I think cosmetic surgery, I automatically think “appearance age reduction.” To me, that is for mature women!

Of course, it is statistics such as this that drives the manufactures’ advertising campaign dollars. It is no wonder that all the anti-aging products, skin care and diet programs are all being advertised using lovely young women and men under 30-years old.

What has driven our society of beautiful young men and women to this point of such low self esteem? There are so many out there who are not happy unless they have the PERFECT, nose, eyes, teeth, breasts and waist size.

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October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the publications and media have had a field day with articles. The feedback on the blogs and letters to the editors has been phenomenal.

Being a 29-year breast cancer survivor, all this hype has me flooded with reactions, good, bad and indifferent.

One recent article, “Breast Cancer Sells,” had me hanging on every word and struck more than one raw nerve.

Here is a women’s disease that seems to be providing a way for EVERYONE to make money. T-shirt sales, magazine sales, pink clothing, purses, and pink ribbon jewelry are all playing on the sympathy of the public that has been touched at one time or another by breast cancer. Even the breast cancer awareness groups are profiting by all the media hype.
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I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The easiest way to explain our relationship is that she is my granddaughter’s paternal grandmother. C and I have been in each other’s lives for over 12 years.

We have not been overly close, but she is well aware of the fact that I am a 29-year breast cancer survivor and a victim of silicone breast implants. Over the years, we have had many discussions about my lobbying Congress and my crusade to educate women on the safety issues around breast implants.

You can imagine my agitation when C called to tell me about her cancer… and in the same breath say that she was having a mastectomy with the “new” silicone implant reconstruction. Then she almost laughed as she told me that her surgeon said that, being it was for reconstruction, her insurance would pay for her to have her remaining breast augmented. She could now become a well-endowed woman!

I will spare you all the details of my response to her…. ultimately C is doing her own thing. But I do want to share this:

Twenty-nine years ago, when I was 25-years old and the surgeon told me the results of my biopsies, the only thing I cared about was LIVING.

Of course, back then, if you had a breast cancer diagnosis, you had a mastectomy. There was no choice. Eventually I got silicone implants to replace what I had lost, and they made me – AGAIN - very, very sick, when I was trying so hard to stay healthy.

My personal feeling is that reconstruction should NOT be a part of the initial cancer diagnosis and treatment plan. Society has gotten all the priorities screwed up, because we don’t need breasts to survive in life. Loosing an arm or a leg would be a far worse sacrifice. There is not a woman alive who can make an informed, educated decision on implants when she has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. At that time, life-saving treatment choices are far more important than reconstruction choices.

Yes, breast implants for breast cancer patients SHOULD be a choice for reconstruction. But for later, after all the important decisions have been made, the hardest treatment completed, and the woman clear-headed, hopeful and working on getting back to her life.

I waited five years before I had silicone implant reconstruction, a decision I made because we didn’t know then what we know now about how breast implants are. After going through what I went through, I wish had waited another 25 years. But that is a story for another time.

TAGS: breast cancer, breast implants, breast reconstruction