Whoa Nellie

So I was wondering what to write about tonight, because my mind went blank again. This writing every day thing is hard. So I turned to television, as every inventive writer should. And whoa, did I find something.

See, I've been kind of down on myself lately, especially where my weight is concerned. I weigh more now than I did six weeks post-partum, and I have been asked not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES when I was due again. One of them was by a seven year-old, but still. So I thought it would be interesting to watch a show called Drastic Plastic Surgery on the Oxygen Network (it was showing after Dazed and Confused, which I watched with my baby. Bad Mama, on many levels there). This episode was about breast augmentation. Now, I have always been pretty neutral about that whole thing. You know, you want to do that to yourself, or pierce your genitals or split your tongue, hey, fine by me. This show, though, was something else. I learned three things on it that will never allow me to think about augmentation neutrally again.

The first: On some women, after lots of push up bras, the implants will move closer and closer to the center of the chest until they essentially create one large cavity -- a uniboob. Boy, do I wish I could find a picture of this.

The second: In order to create enough space in the chest cavity for large implants, the doctor put her fingers inside the incision and just ripped the connective tissue. Just worked her way around in there like she was skinning something. Now, I've seen a lot of The Operation on the Discovery Channel, and I am no stranger to the violence that is inflicted on the body during some surgeries. Liposuction, for instance, looks horrible. But this... this... just seemed so much like something I'd do to a chicken breast to put butter and herbs under the skin before roasting.

The third: Some implants have valves on them so that it is an easy trick for the surgeon to go in and attach tubing to them to fill them with more saline to make them bigger. It happens that often that women want to enlarge them after surgery, or to make them so big that even the above ripping doesn't give them enough skin so that they have to gradually enlarge them, over a period of weeks.

Is there someplace safe that I can take my daughter and raise her so she would never, ever contemplate something like this?