Eighty percent of the 2 million American women with breast implants chose the surgery for nonmedical reasons, most often a reason like Regina’s-to enhance the kind of self-esteem that relies on breast size. “So much of women’s self-esteem is based on appearance,” says Jennifer Knopf, director of the Northwestern University Sex and Marital Therapy Program in Chicago. “But they’re very critical of themselves. Women undress in front of a mirror, and they start to do pathology patrol. “Bonnie, a Chicago office manager, says she had been thinking about new breasts since she was a teenager; she finally had surgery seven years ago when she was 34. “There are a lot of flat-chested women out there who have wonderful relationships and marriages,” she says. “But my opinion is you’re more likely to turn someone’s head or get a date if you have large breasts. Men are so superficial. That’s what prompted me.”
Some husbands and boyfriends give women the implants as gifts (and may even pick out the size they like best). Surveys indicate, however, that most women feel they are making the decision on their own and for themselves, not for the man in their lives. “It’s a self-confidence thing,” says Bonnie. “That’s what it boils down to-feeling like a woman.”
It is possible to feel like a woman without buttressing your body with artificial secondary sex characteristics, but our society-like many before it-prizes women most highly for their packaging. The pressure on women to look more feminine than female, more symbolic than real, goes back centuries. Throughout most of the 1800s, writes historian Valerie Steele in her 1985 book “Fashion and Eroticism,” stylish women were shaped like two cones whose points met at a tightly constricted waist. Corsets made it hard for women to draw a deep breath and may have caused a broken rib or two, but they displayed a bosom as if it were an ice-cream sundae on a platter. Early in this century the platter effect gave way to the long, straight Empire look, and by the ’20s a slim, boyish figure was a fashion necessity. Breasts came back after World War II, this time linked with dumb blondes in the most regrettable partnership since the sweet potato met the marshmallow. During the ’60s and ’70s the boyish look returned with a vengeance when Twiggy became an icon. Today breasts are back-reportedly even Jane (how to marry a millionaire) Fonda sports them-but there’s a difference. “A woman’s appearance is now dependent on how closely she approximates Barbie,” says Pauline Bart, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “You’re supposed to be very thin with large breasts. This is difficult.”
It’s always difficult. What these changing demands on women’s bodies have in common is that the ideal is impossible for most women to achieve. Inadequacy is virtually built into us. Women are equated with their body parts in a way that men simply are not; even now there aren’t many women in public life who are nationally known for something besides their looks. Those women who locate their self-esteem in their bra size are accurately reading their culture.
Sad to say, they’re also surrendering to their culture. It’s unlikely that larger breasts became fashionable in the ’80s simply because the braless look went out of style. For the last 20 years women have been joining the work force in unprecedented numbers, choosing to postpone marriage and motherhood longer than any other generation in American history, and grappling for power with all the weaponry and wits they can muster. We’ve embarked on one of the most far-reaching revolutions conceivable, and it’s made a lot of people uncomfortable and frightened-not all of them men. What better symbol for times like these than large breasts? They conjure up just about everything that makes women dependent on men, including sex, maternity and bimbo-hood.
Many women insist that cosmetic breast surgery is a choice they have a right to make, dangerous or not. “I don’t want this to become a debate on whether we’re an overly breast-conscious society,” says Sharon Green, executive director of Y-ME, a Homewood, Ill.-based support program for breast-cancer patients that receives many queries from healthy women seeking information on breast implants. But a debate on society’s grotesque expectations for women is exactly what they need, far more than they need surgery. To “choose” a procedure that may harden the breasts, result in loss of sensation and introduce a range of serious health problems isn’t a choice, it’s a scripted response. And it’s worthy of the Stepford wives.
