I Don’t Care What’s In – Count Me Out!

Jasmine Wing gets to the bottom of fickle fashions in cosmetic surgery.

Whatever kind of plastic surgery is trending at the moment, I personally want nothing to do with it! However I’m still intrigued as to why women are migrating from one pointless operation to another – each one equally risky, expensive and probably pointless. Why are (some) people prepared to go to such lengths in order to have more of this and less of that? And how can it be that one body part suddenly becomes more must-have than another?

As I see it, my rite of passage into adulthood was completed the moment I realised that breast and bum implants are not the transformation they are made out to be. But that doesn’t stop other women from investing in them, and, even more remarkably, transferring their investments from one part of the body to another.

New figures reveal that boob jobs have dropped dramatically. In keeping with the trend away from inflated breasts, celebrity model Katie Price, having boosted herself to a G cup in 2000, has recently returned to a 32B cup. However according to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS – I kid you not), while 20 per cent fewer women are now opting for breast augmentation, bum surgery is up 13 per cent. Where Katie Price’s boobs were once the big thing, Kim Kardashian’s bottom is now the talk of the town.

Growing up in the 90s and 00’s I felt the brunt of the ‘boob job era’. Being a rather flat chested girl myself, I faced bullying and a considerable amount of insecurity and dissatisfaction with my own breast size. The enormous pressure to have big breasts was palpable. Some will say that Page 3 and the ‘Hello, Boys’ Wonderbra advert had little or no effect, but I certainly felt the pressure. In my formative years I saw what I thought breasts were supposed to look like and became more and more disheartened when mine did not conform.

I remember the lengths I went to s-t-r-e-t-c-h myself into shape. I also blubbered to my mother that ‘I WILL get a boob job as soon as I am old enough’. I couldn’t be further away from that now. Indeed I am proud not to be a ‘chesty’ individual; instead I embrace the body God gave me.

Illustration: Don Gilburn
Illustration: Don Gilburn

By the time the emphasis shifted from boob to butt, I was grown up enough to resist the pressure to conform. However I am aware that the next generation is now signing up for the bum festish. My concerns were confirmed recently when a younger family member, aged 12, told me that the bum she was born with may not be large enough for ‘clubbing type dresses’. She was troubled that it may not ‘grow enough’.

‘I wish I’d never had breast implants now,’ TOWIE star Lauren Pope confessed recently. The Essex girl who went from cup size A to D, now says ‘I’d always encourage young girl to hold out as long as possible.’

But it’s one thing to ‘hold out’ against the kind of cosmetic surgery that is no longer in fashion. More difficult – but much more important, to take a stand against the current trend for big bottoms.

So c’mon, girls. Let’s not be chased around our own body parts. This is one assault course we could well do without!

No ifs, no butts – just say no to the inflated claims of all surgical implants.

JasmineW40

Jasmine Wing is Rising East’s Health and Wellbeing Editor.

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