As a bit of a segue from my link to Eye on Big Brother’s last post, I was thinking a bit about Bianca and her body image issues, something I’ve discussed before. At one stage during Big Brother 2008, the narrative centred on Bianca’s breasts - her worries about her own body shape, her ambivalence about breast reduction surgery, and her displacement of her own troubled embodiment into criticism of Brigette and Rebecca and the other surgically enhanced FHM wannabes the show loved to cast over the last few years. She also had a bit of an awareness of how the womens’ bodies on the show functioned as signifiers of potential celebrity, and as objects to be scrutinised and traded among the men on the show - and implicitly the male viewers, though she didn’t really thematise this as such. Partly what was going on here was her own self-image and character work as “the smart chick”, but it’s also, when you reflect on it, I think, a classic example of how “society” is conceived in popular culture. I mentioned Rebecca Wilson’s comments on all the boob talk:
I think it was on the very first Big Brother Big Mouth this year that Rebecca Wilson asked whether it was normal for teenage and twenty-something women to talk so much about their breasts. She said that she couldn’t recall such discussions occurring when she was in her twenties.
Now, the way in which both Wilson and Bianca (and the other housemates) talked about body image and cosmetic surgery tended to be framed in part as a critique of some reified “society” - not unlike the tirades about consumerism that circulate in our consumerist postmodern culture - but also as an individual problem. And for Bianca it was a real problem. The more I think about this episode the more I think it actually goes a long way to demonstrating C. Wright Mills’ classic sociological insight about how structural problems are experienced as individual moral dilemmas, and not seen for what they are. As I’m suggesting, that doesn’t make the body politics of being an adolescent girl in Australia any easier. But I thought it was worth linking - in this context - to an excellent review of Flinders Uni sociologist Anthony Elliott’s book Making the Cut: How Cosmetic Surgery is Transforming our Lives at the Global Sociology Blog. It’s worth reading in its entirety, because Elliott has teased out the causes and inter-relations of how body image and the desire to consume cosmetic surgery is linked closely to broader social, economic and cultural trends. Go read!
Update: This thread also spawned posts by tigtog at Hoyden and Feral Sparrowhawk at Rapturous Thinking.
She looks a cuddly girl…mmm..
Seriously, am well-aware why women consider reductions rather than having to spend the rest of their lives rucksacking or wheel-barrowing around mammary excess- even your average half brained bloke onlooker can see that this must become heavy work after a while.
As for the rest of Kim’s usual constructive comments with their undelying plea for understanding ,
will beg off now, except to to say am consideringthem further, because have wasted too much time trying to figure out behaviours which to me seem stupid,self-defeating and even arrogant.
After all this is a world where scarce resources for millions of genuinely ill, sick and starving people are denied as part of what seems to be little more than a process or strategy of reality denial( or abnegating emphasis, if you like ). Yes, you can include four wheel drive obstentation, gym memberships etc; other forms of conspicuous consumption unrelated to gender except as to wider or immanent origins of current society and culture.
I remember Sacha, possibly the same Sacha who used to participate in Darlene’s blog, talking more along the lines of class rather then gender strategy ( a dichotomy? ) for collective bourgeois alibiing to ensure one’s own slice of the cake, in Tig Tog’s feminism one-o-one, a comment incidently curiously overlooked as material for a conversation by Tig Tog.
Also, have in mind an allusive comment once from Emma Tom, one of a tiny handful of useful journos at GovGaz, talking in terms of Bataille and Economies of Excess ( access, if you die in the third world!).
But enough, others know better and can only look forward to a prospective education concerning these issues.
I meant to say this on the previous Bianca thread in relation to Rebecca Wilson’s comment. My gf’s a 20-something woman, and sometimes it seems that she and her friends talk about nothing but their breasts. Mind you, sometimes it seems they do nothing but talk, full stop.
*So says the 32yo male usually found in the kitchen eavesdropping while cooking*
It could be that the BB housemates and audiences are generally too low down on the food-chain to discuss anything else. I realize sexual subjects are of course part of the lowest common denominator factor but I wondered in the days when I had a TV whether these people had any idea how dopey and undignified they actually are.
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The sex talk on BB is the sartorial equivelant of someone eating spaghetti at a restaurant, with their fingers.
Adrien wrote:
Garbage. There are endless numbers of french tittie films on SBS which are acceptable fare for those higher on the food-chain. Same subject, different packaging. The only difference being you can pretend to be art-house-sophisticated instead of base and sensual. But it isn’t really.
Just watching that Stepford advertising show on ABC, with Will Wotsisname and the advertising honchos and hucksters trying to avoid letting the various cats out of the bag as far as advertising is concerned.
Jane Caro is talking about advertisers “selling female insecurity”, as to these billions of dollars of junk fobbed off as beauty aids and cosmetics.
Some one else is talking about the persuasian box of tricks, in this case the appropriate “word modifier” at a given space in a certain kind of ad, that seem to indicate so strongly a fair access to what we would call a close blueprint of the human working mind. So what buttons are pushed, when was the receptivity to these stimuli implanted and does behaviour modification that actually jeopardises the targets of advertising, in this case women, actually create residual conditioned behaviours that damage these people in other facets of later life?
Are yesterdays barbie dolls and todays party girls tomorrow’s lushes and harridans? And how does such a prospective process involve interplay of life processes, basic socialisation and enculturation and further to this, interventions by sophisticated advertisers?
Can we talk of a form of, for all intents and purposes, assault, that would lead to criminal charges and law suits if conducted in cruder form, as with a pub brawl or police hiding?
I know “post” criticism prefers to address audience complicity and its little”transgressions” more than previous teh left theories, but that relies on the concept of the conscious self-reliant individual free of any subsonscious mechanism and its manipulation toomuch,doesn’t it?
Are we totally sure, as to what constitutes “the mind” and reality itself, for that matter? Are (post) modern theorists so sure there is no potential for manipulation. No basis at all to neo- Freudian or Jungian analyses, for example..?
Adrien and David, the point I’m not sure you’ve grasped is that the discussions in question were about body image and cosmetic surgery.
What Kim said. Breasts and “titties”, Adrien and David, are not always ’sexual subjects’. For women, and I do believe it is women’s conversation that is at issue here, they’re not even usually sexual subjects.
Shocking, I know, but there it is.
Oh Noes! Must remember to avoid the chick only threads, can only ever be wrong in them.
So body image only occasionally has something to do with sexuality? Ok, right. So why the hell is my girlfriend always wasting her breath telling me that guys like chicks with big boobs and I’d like her more *groan* if she had bigger ones? Shits me to tears, but she won’t hear or believe otherwise. And yes, she often raises the subject of “cosmetic” surgery - at least two of her girlfriends have implants and she says, with only the slightest hint of satire, “They only get attention cos of their tits and I’d be so much hotter than them if I had them (implants).”
I’m with DR on this one on “chick” threads. And so, to lower the tone, I’m going to borrow from Bill Oddie:
Tits, tits, tits, tits,
Everybody loves tits.
I’m not sure lowering the tone is all that helpful, Youie! And I’m not saying that this is a “chicks only” thread, just asking people to read what’s written in context and discuss things appropriately. I can see how Adrien could have got the impression that the boob discussions on BB were in the context of “sex talk” - though only with a bit of a stretch and only if he hadn’t really got the point of the post. I was seeking to correct that misimpression. And, yes, as I said in the post, there is a link between body image, objectification, and the sexualisation of the body.
If anyone finds all this too difficult to understand, please let me know, and I’ll try to clarify further.
By ‘everybody’, Youie, I take it the well-named Bill Oddie meant ‘men’, and that was my point.
Breasts are objects of desire to most blokes, and to women who fancy other women. To the rest of us, they are a source of constant worry, either because (1) they are large, weighty objects necessitating expensively engineered bras and will give us shocking back and neck problems by the time we’re 40, (2) because the world is full of blokes who think it’s acceptable to comment audibly on (if not actually grab) the breasts of anyone who happens to be passing, (3) because we have good reason to fear either failing to breastfeed our children with them successfully or getting cancer in them, or (4) because we think they are ‘too small’ and we have not yet thought through the logic of this enough to realise that if a bloke’s attitude to you depends on the size of your breasts then the smart thing to do is get away from him as quickly as possible.
And if your main aim in life is ‘getting attention’, then you are not a woman at all. You are a child.
Quoted from the book review:
It’s basically impossible to disassociate the discussion of breast surgery and sexuality. And Rebecca Wilson might be right in saying she didn’t discuss breasts as a 20 year old, but I’ll bet she discussed whether some clothing or other “flattered her figure” which is a polite way of discussing your breasts (and other bits) appearance. Have a look at the profiles of those undergoing surgery and what they are having done sometime - it’s all about appearance for sexual purposes. Whether it’s a facelift or the rather more overt breast operations (lifts, reductions, enhancements) or the incredibly bizarre labioplasty. It’s not that we don’t understand Kim, it’s that we think it’s important not to mistake the comments as “breasts are always about sex”. They aren’t, but a hell of a lot of the time, they are.
“It’s basically impossible to disassociate the discussion of breast surgery and sexuality.”
I agree to the extent that it is difficult to dissociate a discussion of any aspect of the body from sexuality. The same could be said of any discussion of personhood. But recognising the two can’t be totally dissociated doesn’t mean they can’t be distinguished analytically, and I would suggest that women, in particular, do this all the time. Also, not all discussion of sexuality is supposed to be arousing to spectators. Some of it is mundane, analytical, or takes the sexual dimension of a particular topic as a fact to be considered or put aside like any other.
There seems to be the belief that the larger the breasts the more sexually attractive the woman. This is not the case with Bianca. Her breasts are large to the point of grotesqueness. She should have them reduced for the sake of her own health. A secondary benefit for her would be an increase in sexual attractiveness.
Actually, he was talking about string rather than tits, which is why I said I was borrowing from him. A vain attempt to put a catchy Goodies song in the head of those who recognised it. Seemed funny at the time…
Heh! Sorry — my popular-culture reference field is pretty broad but obvs not broad enough.
I think the comments thread here has highlighted one of the major comprehension breakdowns between (most) men and (most) women in our society.
I think most men think that questions of body image and attractiveness are purely about sex. Possibly because they pretty much are for us. If I could hang a magic distorting lens around my neck which made me look more attractive to potential partners and less attractive to men, lesbians, women I wasn’t interested in, family members etc I wouldn’t hesitate. I doubt most men would, and we assume the same goes for straight women - that their body images are about appealing to men.
Then every now and then we come across one of those studies that says that most young women would prefer to be thin than have a fantastic sex life and our brains crash. Personally I just don’t get it. Assuming you’re not so fat there are serious health issues, why the hell would you want to be thin other than to have a good sex life?
The difference between myself and Youie or David Rubie is that I know there’s something I’m not getting, although I don’t quite understand what it is.
We must, we must, we must increase the quality of our gendered discourse.
Are you saying I don’t know what I’m not getting (an unknown unknown) or that I know I’m not getting something but I do understand what it is? Christ, now you’ve confused me… Or did I confuse myself?
Whatever. To take the isolated example of my gf: last night she said that I just didn’t know how hard it was for her and other women to find a balance between being appealing to men without being too appealing, while simultaneously not getting evil looks from other women for just existing. (Hey, life’s tough, she’s a stunner. Can I say that, or am I reducing her to a masculinist abstraction?) She worries about the size of her breasts (I don’t, they’re very nice thanks); I’m conscious of my greying, thinning hair. But I couldn’t give a shit whether another bloke has nicer hair than I do. Them’s the breaks, whaddaya do, throw another prawn etc…
Telling her to “just be yourself” - which is my male solution - doesn’t cut the mustard with her. She’s still competing with other women out there - she thinks it, and from what I can tell, nearly all of her friends think the same way: it’s competition among women. Men will look at women; women criticise women.
“She worries about the size of her breasts (I don’t, they’re very nice thanks); I’m conscious of my greying, thinning hair. But I couldn’t give a shit whether another bloke has nicer hair than I do. Them’s the breaks, whaddaya do, throw another prawn etc…”
That’s all very well (and minus the thinning pate a decent precis of my situation to boot) but I think the question is where these things come from.
And I don’t see that you’ve tried to address that, or acknowledged that each gender’s attitudes may be influencing the other’s.
“but I think the question is where these things come from.”
Esse est percipi.
(hat tip: Bishop Berkeley)
translation: To be, is to be perceived.
I was making a general comment about BB not about Bianca in particular. I shot my TV and haven’t seen BB since 2005. As I understand it the non-sexual interpretation of Bianca’s cosmetic speculations might be more about personal comfort than aesthetics. Most breast augmentations I’d wager are about physical appearance. Personally I don’t find the Pamela Anderson thing so appealing and having had a couple friends who’ve been thru that thing (and auffered) I’d rather you didn’t.
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Okay. Do I get a smiley badge now?
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BB is mostly sex talk, sexual innuendo - of the most assinine and infantile kind. They select people specifically for their stupidity.
Shocking, I know, but there it is.
Thanks Mum. I didn’t realize that, mired as I am in the loungeroom stew of me and my footy mates who spend all of our lives watching really awful pornography and footy and eating hamburgers and footy and whistling at women and footy and ….
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Oh wait. I’m nothing like that at all.
Actually I’m both art-house sophisticated and base and sexual. It’s entirely possible y’know.
Nice try, Kim. I would have enjoyed a serious discussion of the post too. But I think all hope of having one would depend on a total ban on the word ‘breasts’ and all of its synonyms from the discussion. I’m thinking of that Monty Python sketch about the furniture shop where they all have to get into the fishpond and sing ‘Jerusalem’ every time anyone says ‘mattress’.
Heh! Maybe that’s the way to go, Dr Cat!
I think what the boys are missing here is that what’s very depressing for women when considering questions of body image (where the sexualisation of the body and its objectification are at issue, but where we’re actually trying to put that in question) is for blokes to suddenly start talking about “tits” and “sex”. Sigh.
Yes we’re all so immature, what can you do?
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What exactly would this discussion consist of. So far the commentary seems to be that ‘yes guys dig boobs but they’re a pain in the arse’. Okay.
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Are we to discuss the increasing tendency in our society to require physical perfection? Well it isn’t really a requirement is it? It’s a sales tool. We are shown pictures of impossibly beautiful people, feel hideous by comparison and seek all sorts of means to address this.
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This is applying to men too. However it’s still clear that there are double standards and that women are still the main targets. Jessica Valenti’s book re double standards lists several axiomatic sexist riffs in ours society. Somewhere there she says that altho’ men are subjected to pressure about body image it’s a pressure to adopt what is seen as optional improvements. Men aren’t required to get their chests waxed. Similarly male actors can be fat, female actors are required to be third and so forth.
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And it’s known that marketers target babies now. So the media is programming lttle girls with the beauty myth. Little boys? Men can buy cosmetics too.
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To what extent is this a problem (I think subliminal advertsing to children is nasty) and to what extent is it a benefit. After all breast reduction surgery can assist in releiving those back problems PC mentions.
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Izzat better?
I think, Adrien, what I’m interested in is discussion of the underlying factors causing all this which is why I linked to the review of the Elliott book. I don’t want to intervene too much in the discussion. I’m interested in what others think. It seems to me significant that it’s linked to far more than commonly thought, which is again what I was saying in the post.
Kim wrote:
Shorter Kim: I’m uninterested in any opinion that doesn’t fit my preconceived notions.
If you’re depressed about the state of women and their dismal opinions of their own bodies, you might start by addressing the inevitable issue that first comes up rather than dismissing it in some futile attempt to generate the “perfect” discussion. It is inevitably the elephant in the room.
Any society that decides the whiteness of ones cornhole is of any import is in serious trouble in my opinion. Not because men are obsessed with sex, but that women think we are.
No, you’re refusing to read my comment. But I guess in talking about how women feel about the sorts of leap of logic that go from breasts to sex in the flick of an eye, that’s dismissable as “irrational” or “emotive” or something. Note also that any attempt to steer discussion on a thread like this isn’t seen as moderation and accepted as such as it would be on many other threads, but perceived (inevitably by men) as an attempt to constrain or shut down discussion. In point of fact, with respect, it’s actually an attempt to open up a space for discussion that allows women to have a voice.
But now I suppose I have to defend that, rather than discussing.
Have a think about the logic of the way this discussion works - it’s an extremely familiar pattern on a “chick thrad”. And a very depressing one for me.
Err, please read the post.
David Rubie:
Utter bullshit as far as my breast reduction went. All about quality of life. I had constant chronic pain in my neck and upper spine, gradually exacerbating over several years, due to the weight of my breasts. When I had my reduction surgery, that pain immediately disappeared.
I also think most women have surgery for reasons of increasing their social confidence (maybe to get a better job) rather than sex per se. The idea of being more attractive to sexual partners is more of a bonus than the primary goal, for the people I know who’ve had work done.
tigtog, it’s an interesting anecdote but it hardly matches the sheer number of breast enhancement operations being undertaken. I’m sure a certain percentage of those are about sorting out issues after breast cancer for example, but the vast majority are not.
Labioplasty? Thinking that a lopsided labia is a hideous deformity requiring surgical intervention? Butt implants? Whole body lifts?
Why do women hate themselves so much they undertake these things? I’m sure there’s a certain amount of pressure from sexual partners, but that can’t be the whole story.
I can understand facial surgery, or botox or whatever as being about social confidence, but (aside from reductions and cancer related operations) most of the plastic surgery actively marketed to an eager crowd of women could easily be replaced with the old remedies of smoking, corsets, padded bras and turning the lights out.
This is surgery we’re talking about, not hidden under clothes. It’s meant to be displayed naked.
I know Kim is frustrated at the idea that we can’t talk about breasts like handbags (and that somehow the linked article connects fashion accessories and the instant gratification society that has embraced surgery) but I honestly don’t think that conversation is even possible given the sheer weight of numbers of women turning to sexually related surgery to address their body image issues.
If you’ve never seen “Doctor 90210″ on the TV, I recommend it. Not so much for butcher like surgery the doctors to do perfectly adequate lady parts, but for the sheer detachment those women have about their bodies. As if it’s a product that needs a shiny new logo to be saleable again. I really don’t think it’s about men, it’s about a fundamental misunderstanding that surgery seeking women have about men.
I wouldn’t have expressed it as harshly as David Rubie but tend to agree as to “adaptability”, since I think this is what he eventually means. Is this the missing point you feel some of us are missing, Kim- the inability of people in modern society to adapt or adjust any more. Not just women, either- look at the problems many blokes have as to marriages breaking up, for example.
Everything is a a quick fix rather than a meaningful attempt to engage with reality, let alone adversity. Must admit am finding it difficult myself to quite get what Kim at 24 is saying either- part of this “mutual incomprehension” thing mentioned in another post ( no, not necessarily “mystification”; we are trying sincerely to understand.).
On the basis of the photo alone ( loath bb ) I would have not Bianca’s body was “grotesque” at all btw, as Silkworm perhaps insensitively opined.
Rather, rather gorgeous.
But I understand what those familiar with the practical or workaday problems of a generous figure are getting at. Tig Tog et al, are quite correct in suggesting a medical issue, perhaps in the absence of a sensitive enough partner to make a voluptuous figure a worthwhile investment in compensating and supportive (no pun) ways.
Paul W, no amount of sensitive partnering is going to fix a girl’s spine after it has been pulled out of shape by the weight of her breasts. No amount of sensitive partnering is going to alleviate the psychological effects of having had obscenities regularly screamed at one in adolescence by total strangers twice and three times one’s age out of trucks. No amount of sensitive partnering will make it suddenly, miraculously possible to run for the bus without knocking yourself unconscious. (Dolly Parton: “Joggin’? Honey, Ah cain’t go joggin’. Ah’d black out both mah eyes.”) I think one of the things the various women here are finding it hard to get across is there are many ways ( and no, of course, not all ways, and nobody here has been arguing that) in which, for women, their breasts have got nothing to do with men.
Some men here are obviously finding that really hard to accept. Or even to imagine.
What’s this?
A half hearted attempt at what seems suspiciously close to a flaming of sensible folk who would dare mock the narcism of the middle classes or their conspicuos consumption?
“….their breasts have got nothing to do with men.”
Nah, s’pose not.
We should not even question the money wasted on them, or other parts of a “private” ( incorporated? ) body, in the way of implants, mutiliations etc. Let’s bear in mind in two previous posts I recognised the right of women for corrective surgery for reductions for health reasons, btw!
We should no more question this form of squander than we should question Cheney supporters bank rolling Cheney to waste a trillion doing direct murder in Iraq. We should not even think to question the Catholic church’s squandering of a quarter of a billion on a propaganda stunt; after all its THEIR money, and who cares if there’s a corruption of a theology intended by its creator as public property, btw
And we should NEVER question the Middle Classes collectively wasting of billions on equally unnecessary surgery, let alone all the other vulgar forms of conspicuous consumption, for neurotic, narcicistic or self indulgent reasons. The thought that billions of REAL women and other people with AS MUCH right to the earth’s resources in common, for REAL reasons, seek but are are denied access to them, should not even cross our minds.
No, we must defer, instead, to the foregrounding the typically bourgeois notion of body as “property”, even if that means suspending our contemplations of what should comprise global human health access.
But ’scuse those of us invited to comment on a public site, when solicited for our responses TO such squander, particularly when we dare come to an alternative conclusion concerning the notion in question’s ethical content. We should have just offered unquestioning applause of a childish, unconscious recession into self indulgence, let alone offered an expression of sympathy for those REAL people denied on its behalf.
Paul, you seem to be extrapolating an awful lot of extra baggage from PC pointing out that your proffered panacea of “sensitive partnering” to make a large-breasted woman forgo surgery for a condition that causes chronic pain is condescending crap, and that there are indeed many ways that women view their breasts that have nothing to do with men. I also don’t see where PC is defending the conspicuous consumption aspects of cosmetic surgery -it’s possible to have a negative view of both the cosmetic surgery industry and of your comments in this thread.
If you don’t want to get challenged for writing condescending crap, then don’t write it.
Looking good, looking “sexy” even, is not all about women doing it for the menz, or about actual sex. Indeed, as many other men say, many/most of you certainly don’t demand that women surgically alter their bodies. The problem is that this disconnect gets framed as women being confused about what men really want (the silly dears) - do you guys really think that women don’t understand that the actual men who like them personally don’t really want them to go under the knife? More condescending crap.
From the book review that Kim urged everybody to go and read:
The celebrity culture has made a certain youthful look socially desirable (verging on mandatory), and if one doesn’t attempt to look sexy in middle and even old age one is denigrated for letting oneself go, no matter whether one wants to attract the opposite sex or not. Women over 25 know this well: if one don’t groom oneself to look at least a little “sexy” then one will be ignored entirely by most men in a room, even in a workplace situation, even when one is the team-leader. That’s not a very good way to get a further promotion, even if one wouldn’t want to shag one of those male co-workers for a million bucks. (This mandatory youthfulness is starting to hit men now, too).
It would be really nice if we could lift the focus above alleged purely sexual insecurities and look instead at the social insecurities that Kim emphasised in the post.
Hammer, meet nail. Well said tigtog.
I wonder to what extent the rise of cosmetic surgery can be read alongside more recent attitudes to physical fitness - and also ‘thinness’ (fitness/thinness may be gendered inflections of the same thing - and thinness is closely related to cosmetic surgery). It seems the two (cosmetic surgery and fitness) are complementary in a sense, although the consumption of fitness has been with us a little longer perhaps, because it has origins in modern disciplinary regimes. It’s also harder to successfully transform fitness into a commodity, though it seems that fitness works in a similar way in terms of consumer ‘restlessness’ - ie “provokes the very anxiety it seems to quell” by highlighting, and to an extent creating, the inadequacies of bodies that are produced by the ordinary conditions of contemporary life.
Pavlov’s Cat wrote:
She’s her own worst enemy. Nothing forced her to have the surgery that makes that problem. Dolly is a pretty smart cookie, she’s seemingly aware of the nature of her own bodies commodification (”Backwoods Barbie” for example) but making jokes about a disability you forced on yourself is pretty stupid.
I hadn’t watched much of BB this year, so had to go looking for pictures of Bianca. She’s 10Kg overweight at least on a pretty small frame, sorting that out might go some way to fixing potential back problems.
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I thought Dolly Parton’s original boobs were large. She’s had plenty of surgical nips and tucks (and lifts) but that’s her natural size.
It’s a bit hard to tell tigtog, what Dolly originally looked like. When she was on the Porter Wagoner show in the sixties she didn’t look that big, but a lot of what was going on was trussed together with a Dagmar like 1950’s torpedo bra so who really knows. Here’s a youtube of her singing back then - not as big as she is now, and definitely in no danger of putting her own eyes out.
Contrast and compare to recent Parkinson footage: Zowie!!. Self inflicted disability, by her own admission done for the consumption of men.
Ur 2 r both rite, her boobs are naturally large AND she’s had implants!
[link]
David, one’s breasts get bigger as one gets older. The skin stretches and loosens, like every other part of the body. I think this would be even truer for those of us with very full breasts to begin with.
I think it’s strange that on the one hand you’ve said (at 31, for instance) that you think women undergo these procedures because of a mistaken idea that men want them to look different, but on the other, you said Bianca is at least 10kg overweight. I don’t agree that she is, but that’s neither here nor there.
Maybe you meant she’s overweight for health reasons rather than for appealing to men reasons - if so then why is it plausible that a woman would diet for ‘health’ but not that she’d have a breast reduction for health?
And the point of the Dolly Parton example is?
Going back to tigtog’s comment at 25:
And the other bit of the post that seems to have been overlooked is the discussion of the complexity of motivation, and how professed motivations can demonstrate the individual problematisation of a broader social/cultural pattern. That’s why Bianca, as the post suggests, is a good example of this sort of dialectic, because she comes close to articulating it, but falls at the last hurdle, and because the celebrity context is foregrounded in the BB environment. But it should be clear, I’d have thought, and particularly given the points made in the book review, that an individual concession or justification that “she wants to attract the menz” is hardly a knock down argument to demonstrate “it’s all about teh sex”. There’s such a thing as “the sociology of accounts” where you can observe social patterns shaping expectations, norms and individual behaviour through the excuses, stories, rationalisations individuals offer for doing something which is now “expected” by “society”. It’s a very naive way of proceeding to take such statements at face value, although - in this context - it’s unsurprising that it’s done precisely because it reinforces gendered ways of thinking. And more broadly, anyone who can’t see that a lot of the comments on this thread reflect those gendered structures of feeling really does have their head in the sand.
The Dolly line was used not ‘for’ or ‘against’ her, her boobs and her surgical activities generally, but merely to lighten the tone (hah) and to illustrate the nature of the problem I was describing, ie running for the bus, an activity in which a “supportive partner” could help only by running along in front of one, backwards, pulling a wheelbarrow.
Crossed with Laura. My comment was in response to David’s.
I don’t think Bianca is overweight either, incidentally.
Thanks, Dr Cat - what I was really trying to get at was how the Dolly Parton example was then subsequently taken up - I think to reinforce the claim that cosmetic surgery is about teh sex and it’s some sort of response to some putatively false belief that attractiveness to men is the determinant of female body shaping.
Laura wrote:
That’s exactly what I meant Laura. If she lost the weight, she might also lose the necessity of having a breast reduction. I would think it worth a try simply for health reasons alone. I won’t provide a link due to the obnoxious comments related to the site where the footage is, but there is shower footage of the poor kid trying to wash in a t-shirt. Pretty clearly, losing some weight would help her a lot.
That’s a gorgeous video you linked to by the way. Dolly’s dress is a classic bust minimiser style too. It’s no accident that maternity dresses have (or, used to have, and are beginning agian to have) big white sailor-type collars.
This discussion reminds me a lot of the Bill Henson debate. There, there was a similar suggestion that the condition and appearance of a person’s body, and how he or she chooses to present it and manipulate it, is overwhelmingly a sexual matter. What about other sorts of aesthetic considerations?
I can’t be the only person whose thoughts about how I’d like my body to look have much more to do with dress and style than with looking sexy.
Precisely, so was I. Our comments crossed, however appropriately placed mine may have ended up being in the sequence!
Serendipity!
Mark wrote:
In my opinion that analysis is completely backwards. It’s modern “gendered ways of thinking” that are disguising the rather more simple motivations behind body modification and body politics generally. Your own comment stating you didn’t think Bianca was overweight is a classic example: in polite company we are restricted in expressing negative comment against women as in the past it was a manifestation of male expectations. It doesn’t have to be. It might be, but that doesn’t mean it is.
I doubt Bianca is 10 kg overweight. Large breasts tend not to photograph well under clothes, making their owners look much heavier than they actually are.
Trying to minimise back pain associated with breast size by losing weight can often backfire. As Laura pointed out, breasts get bigger over time and the skin stretches and loosens. This process is exacerbated by significant weight loss, and you can often find yourself going from, say, a 14F to a 8GG (in other words, your breasts become even larger in proportion to the rest of your body).
On a slightly different note, attempts at ’sensitive partnering’ are often anything but - and actually mirror the kind of objectifying-male-gaze and female-self-hatred that are variously proposed as the main drivers for cosmetic surgery. While most fellas seem to get that expressing a disinclination for small breasts is a bit old-hat and not likely to go down well with teh wimmin, they’ll happily describe large breasts as ‘grotesque’ (as in one comment above), perhaps on the naive assumption that this ‘evens things up’ for the relatively flat-chested, or is somehow pro-feminist…
Would it be better if women who preen and mangle their bodies were just after more sex? There’s a case to be made.
If men believe (as I think they broadly do) that women who place a lot of emphasis on their physical display are after sex, but they’re really after self-worth, acceptance, security, attention, love, whatever… then Houston, we have a problem. I can’t believe for the life of me that:
a) Women aren’t aware that most men think they dress up to look sexually attractive
b) Men aren’t aware that women are usually doing so for other reasons
It’s a bummer that so many women who do realise a) just blame that on men. Us poor bastards have only evolved a little since finding sex by going out clubbing meant something a little different. Sexual selection by appearance isn’t exactly a rarity in nature. Is it a bad thing?
As far as b) goes, it just beggars belief. Men know that when they pretty up, it could just as well be to impress people, intimidate people, feel confident that others think well of you, fit in, stand out, or make any number of statements about themselves. Why can’t women be doing this too - yes, even if it means cutting and stuffing and stretching their flesh and bones. It can’t be so simple as men just wanting to see and fuck can it?
Pav, I loved the line about the supportive partner helping a large-busted woman run for the bus backwards with a wheelbarrow! Dolly Parton’s joke reflected real life for many women with naturally large breasts, no matter how she came by hers.
*snort*
*cackle*
FDB wrote:
FDB - there is a big difference between public displays involving clothing and surgery. As I stated above, enhancement surgery is a rather drastic step intended to be viewed naked. If the intention was to simply enhance ones appearance for social reasons, it’s much easier to buy a WonderBra or those revolting rubber chicken fillet things that are stuffed into bras.
Facial surgery or rhinplasty or whatever is a different thing.
Right, because there’s nothing uncomfortable or inconvenient about doing that for the rest of your life instead of having surgery and convalescing for a few weeks instead.
tigtog wrote:
Seriously? You equate the potential problems with invasive surgery for enhancement with 30 seconds worth of farting about in the morning?
I suppose “convenience culture” makes these demands of us, but I think compulsory viewing of cosmetic surgery practices should be shown to teenagers just so they realise that “a few weeks of convalescing” may well turn into a lifetime of horror (silicon implants anyone?)
I’m not talking about my own personal calculus, I’m talking about one particular rational weighing up of options. I’m well aware of the risks of surgery, which is why it took me painful years of lugging around my H-cup burden to finally go ahead with my reduction. But not all women are me.
The only way you can think that wearing either a wonder-bra or rubber bra inserts is “30 seconds worth of farting about in the morning” is that you’ve never worn them. Any strenuous movement requires a subsequent adjustment. What about going on a beach holiday? Out clubbing for the night in a strappy frock? Going to the gym?
Surgical enhancement is NOT just about being seen naked. You are simply wrong on this.
David - do you want to talk about breast enhancement, breast reduction, why girls who you think are too fat should go on diets, or all three? I think the issues are very different in each instance and aside from the general comments about surgery that Kim laid out in her post, I don’t think there can be any umbrella arguments made about them.
A very good book about all this is “Skintight: an anatomy of cosmetic surgery” by Meredith Jones (a Sydneysider and my sister-in-law) [link]
“FDB - there is a big difference between public displays involving clothing and surgery”
DR my brother. I don’t want to push you any further out on a limb, but a matter of degree does not a meaningful distinction make.
Laura wrote:
Laura, I have to disagree. Why else would a show called “How to look good naked” even exist?
tigtog wrote:
Explain labioplasty or cornhole bleaching then.
Way to shift the goalposts away from Wonderbras and rubber chicken fillet thingys.
I meant to link to the comment where you specifically equated breast enhancement with getting naked for sex - #58.
Oh my goodness yes. I too demand a sociological explanation of anal bleaching made exclusively using football analogies.
I’ll start off: “Well Gus, it’s a game of two halves”.
Ha, ha, ha, I might have guessed.
And Tig Tog in the van…
So this is what has become of the once-principled teh Left, stood shoulder to shoulder with our less-blessed and suffering global proletarian sisters and brothers. Down with reification and commodity fetishism; mass carnage and suffering, just plain neglect and worst of all capricious wastage of precious resources, just to drive the despairing Greater Auschwitz message home to the filthy captive billions.
We’ll look after the “essentials” first, THEN worry about the “luxuries” once the level playing field is up and all is finally right for the greivously suffering; when there is no more in authenticity, false consciousness, denialism, sadism and neurotic fetishism manipulated by the fascist genocidal forces that are the real problem, that some folk are so eager to be complicitous with.
Not.
Even Mirandas Devine, Cheney and HoWARd are better thsn some of this lot. At least they are overt in their fascism.
Right. Fighting arguments that present women as uniquely vacuous and complicit with regard to a culture that commodifies the human body is just the same as being the fascist vanguard of consumerism.
Gotcha.
“Well Gus, it’s a game of two halves”
…and in between, you sit on the bleachers and take what the coach dishes out.
tigtog wrote:
Why is it shifting the goalposts? If there are clear alternatives to breast enhancement that work in the context of “social reasons”, why take that explanation at face value?
Nobody pretends the other two procedures are for anything but sexually related matters, but for some reason in this thread breasts are special and never to be considered in that light? Just because you say so?
Some statistics to ponder from 2007 in the US
- breast enhancement running 2:1 against breast reduction.
- liposuction a close second.
- women undergoing procedures at the rate of 10:1 to men.
Ten women for every man (and the mens procedures are overwhelmingly for fat related operations).
There’s a war on for womens bodies, and women are waging it on themselves.
It’s shifting the goalposts because the operations you named are unusual and rather extreme operations David. You know that. I see that Botox injections are by far the commonest kind of cosmetic procedure done in the US, according to your link. There’s no way that can be construed as equivalent to pornifying your bottom.
I also think that breast reduction and breast enlargement are totally different procedures and while enlargement probably does come about for sexual-aesthetic reasons, I don’t agree at all that reduction does, but you have said at #64 that you think it’s all the same thing, so that’s that as far as I’m concerned.
No idea what Paul Walter’s trying to say, but he sounds cross.
“There’s a war on for womens bodies, and women are waging it on themselves.”
Maybe, but surely the question is why?</