I have recently received an email from a dear friend, outraged at the announcement that the Australian government has decided to ban adult publications and films featuring small breasted women. I have asked her for permission to republish her message here, since her reaction speaks volumes…

Here is an extract from the article, featured on Boing Boing, which my friend quoted:

The Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. They banned mainstream pornography from showing women with A-cup breasts, apparently on the grounds that they encourage paedophilia, and in spite of the fact this is a normal breast size for many adult women. Presumably small breasted women taking photographs of themselves will now be guilty of creating simulated child pornography, to say nothing of the message this sends to women with modestly sized chests or those who favour them. Australia has also banned pornographic depictions of female ejaculation, a normal orgasmic sexual response in many women, with censors branding it as ‘abhorrent’.

Full article here.

And here is the commentary from my friend:

As a “small-breasted” woman who sees how the entire world is becoming silicone-injected, this is infuriating, insulting and enraging!  This is just another thing that is pushing images of women farther and farther from reality.  And for those of us who are real and want to love our bodies as they are, this kind of thing makes it an even steeper up-hill battle. And that last sentence, while I don’t watch pornography, is shocking in 2010.  “Abhorrent”?  Seriously?

Disturbing indeed.

What are your thoughts on the issue?

Last month, during a brief stay in Italy to visit my family, I noticed a disturbing new trend in advertising: creams designed to “lift” breasts and buttocks.

The last time I had seen a print ad for a similar product, I was in my early teens: in the back pages of all the popular teen magazines, I would see ads for X-ray glasses (destined for boys, to see through the clothes of women) and various “miracle” creams designed to accelerate puberty and turn a flat chested girl into a Pamela Anderson-like bombshell. My friends and I would dismiss this as utter rubbish (with the exception of a hopeful pimply faced boy in my class who once purchased X-ray glasses and brought them to school. Sadly, they didn’t work).

Fast-forward to today. Imagine my shock, when, while sitting in my dentist’s waiting room, I see that ads for creams to “increase breast size” are peppering the pages of virtually all the women’s magazines I pick up. Even more surprising? These creams belong to major (read: well respected) cosmetics companies.

Some examples (note: one of the photos below is a bit graphic, showing a nipple, so NSFW for those of you in the United States. Us Europeans are used to a lot worse)

The Title: “Dalla Ricerca COLLISTAR” (“from Collistar’s Research Team” – thus legit, no?)

“La rivoluzionaria novità che rassoda e solleva il seno” = “The revolutionary new product that firms and lifts breasts”

“più alto 2,7 cm” = “1,1 inch higher”

“più voluminoso +1cm” = “1/2 inch more volume”

“più sodo per il 90% delle donne testate” = “firmer breasts for 90% of women tested”

And now, let’s look at the pretty little asterisks that accompany each claim. Mind you, you may need eyeglasses to read those teeny tiny scribbles at the bottom of the page:

“Test clinico-strumentali” = gibberish? Well, let’s say clinical tests conducted on 20 women at an important Italian university. “An important Italian university”? WTF? Also: “maximum values reported after 60 days”. Whatever that means.

Let’s look at another ad, this one from Pupa, a cosmetics company that usually targets teenage girls and women in their 20s-early 30s:

This ad uses a similar language – as well as outrageous claims:

Firming effect = 94%

Rounder breasts (whatever that means) = 97%

Higher breasts = 88%

An interesting tagline, bottom right: “+ volume – chirurgia” (+ volume – plastic surgery)

And now, a quick look at the asterisks:

* Maximum value found in 3 subjects out of 35. Median value: 1 cm.

*** Tests are self-evaluations of 35 women during 8 weeks.

The self-evaluation part is what interests me. Because, whenever you see claims about anti-wrinkle creams, or anti-cellulite creams, or any other potion on the market (creams to increase breasts, buttocks, make your hair fuller, etc.) the percentages the ads refer to are not objective scientific findings. No. All beauty companies – big and small – use the results of self-evaluations in their marketing campaigns.

I once saw a documentary on TV that featured a French lab where they test 90% of cosmetics on the market. Women who participate in the study are given loads of free samples and usually return to the lab after 2 months to fill out a questionnaire about their satisfaction with a given product. A smiling lab attendant asks questions about one’s satisfaction (with yes/no answer) and then the results are compiled. In the documentary in question, a turtle-faced woman in her 60s say that the anti-wrinkle cream she had used had shown positive results. I couldn’t believe it. It’s ALL SUBJECTIVE: no scientific tests are carried out to confirm the claims. After all, if creams could actually reduce wrinkles, lift breasts, eliminate cellulite, why would women resort to expensive and intrusive procedures like Botox, breast implants and liposuction?

What these cosmetics companies are actually selling is HOPE.

After all, Charles Revson, founder of Revlon once said: “In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope.”

For an insightful article about the misleading marketing practices of cosmetics companies, click here.

It’s the same with the breast creams above. A few more examples:

What to do about this? Send your complaints to consumers’ associations.

According to news site News.co.au, Australian consumer group Choice sent three women to thirty clinics in the Brisbane and Melbourne areas to investigate cosmetic surgery practices. The women, passing off as prospective patients, would inquire about treatments such as liposuction, breast augmentation and Botox.

The results were quite shocking. The article reports:

Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said the most remarkable statement to any of the women was that she would have an improved chance of finding a partner if she had her breasts enlarged. 

“It’s incredibly surprising that a doctor would say that. Talk about playing to people’s insecurities,” Mr Zinn said. 

Most concerning was failure to explain the dangers, such as leakage and scarring. 

“Given the known risks and the unwillingness of some cosmetic surgeons to discuss them, there needs to be stronger regulation,” Mr Zinn said. 

Money, money, money.

Original article here.

From Denmark, here is an ad/featurette promoting a web site selling discounted surplus merchandise (in short: a Danish overstock.com)

It has to be one of the most degrading, objectifying ads I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Oh and it is MOST DEFINITELY NSFW (lots of silicone-enhanced breasts on display).

via PlanetWaves.

Excerpt:

“The Swan.” “I Want a Famous Face.” “Dr. 90210.” “Extreme
Makeover.” “Nip/Tuck.” The list goes on. These are a few of the TV shows that have
examined, and promoted, the bene?ts of plastic surgery in recent years. University of Southern California professor Julie Albright believes the shows are driving women to go under the knife to conform to a heightened de?nition of beauty, one that is increasingly dif?cult to attain.

[...]

“Women are being taught to access power and status through their looks, “ Albright believes. “Before women might buy a Louis Vuitton purse to show off their ‘status.’ Now they might buy new breasts as a sign of their success.”

At the very least, these shows act as an advertisement for the plastic surgery industry, Albright says. At the most these shows impose unrealistic beauty standards that make people question their own bodies while giving them an instruction manual on how to change their appearance.

Full article here.

Via Jezebel.

Excerpt:

On the touchy subject of implants, Playboy’s policy seems to be don’t ask, don’t tell. We plotted each model’s bust size (chest circumference at the fullest points) and cup size (breast volume) for all years that data were available (early ’90s to now). While busts have shrunk faster than your 401(k), cup size has remained a buxom C or D. We don’t think evolution can explain this phenomenon.

Full article here.

Tristesse.

Most depressing quote, about a 13 year old who wants to get breast implants:

(Announcer, V.O.)

And Jemma doesn’t just want bigger breasts. She wants them to look like they’re fake.

Feeling incredibly sad and outraged for 2 main reasons:

#1 – these teenage girls want to go under the knife at an age when they are not yet fully aware of the long-term repercussions of such serious surgery

#2 – for big media, who, by deciding to broadcast a program about teen plastic surgery, without the participation of experts weighing in, are essentially normalizing this behavior, making it appear a viable option. Totally irresponsible on their part. Where is Germaine Greer?

Yay! For once a positive spin on real breasts.

From Jezebel.

“I love the fact that you have real breasts,” Oprah gushed to Kate. Kate took this as a compliment. Oprah went on to describe the difference between what happens to real breasts when a woman lies on her back and fake breasts when a woman lies on her back.

Regarding breast implants and FDA testings:

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, said the Bush administration had “finally made the device approval process so meaningless that it’s intolerable to the scientists who work there.” Ms. Zucker, a longtime critic of the agency’s device approval process, particularly as it relates to breast implants, added, “Virtually everything gets approved, no matter what.”

The F.D.A. has a three-tiered approval process for medical devices that, depending on their newness or complexity, requires varying amounts of proof.

A growing chorus of critics contends that the agency requires few devices to complete the most rigorous of these reviews and instead allows most devices to be cleared with minimal oversight. In 2007, 41 devices went through the most rigorous process, compared with 3,052 that had abbreviated reviews.

(Emphasis mine)

Full article here.

To learn more about the downsides of breast implants – and their potentially disastrous consequences for women’s health – check out Kacey’s site: Implants Out. Essential read.

“Forget facials and pedicures. Today’s new moms want tummy tucks and breast lifts.”

Excerpt:

The fact that more women are turning to plastic surgery worries Shari Graydon, author of In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You.

“Apparently, the pressure on new mothers to care for the every need of a completely incompetent and utterly defenceless newborn while stumbling around in a perpetual state of sleep-deprived hormonal overload isn’t enough,” she says.

Giving plastic surgery a name like “mommy makeover” is just clever marketing to women whose body image is suffering, Graydon says. “Calling cosmetic surgery, whether it happens two years or two decades after a woman gives birth, a ‘mommy makeover’ is a cynical attempt to normalize medically unjustified radical intervention.”

Graydon also says mothers who have plastic surgery send a mixed message to their children.

“You can’t convincingly tell your kids, ‘You’re beautiful just the way you are,’ if you’re risking major anesthetic yourself to remake your body after it does what it was biologically designed to do.”

Full article here.