Beauty Redefined Blog

With so many women and girls going under the knife each year, desperate to change their bodies to match societal ideals, here’s a much needed post by Lindsay Kite and Lexie Kite, at Beauty Redefined, deconstructing a current TV commercial for breast augmentation, as well as other media pressures on women to look a certain way.

“It’s time to debunk these ever-circulating excuses about the values of this surgery for the 300,000+ U.S. girls and women who undergo it each year,” they say.

In the ad, a beautiful, thin, middle-aged woman looking at herself in a mirror says “I did it for me”

Lindsay and Lexie:  
‘If you have undergone or are planning to undergo breast augmentation surgery to “feel better about your body,” research shows us this just won’t work. The two major breast implant companies in the U.S., Allergan and Mentor, both tried to prove to the FDA that breast implants helped women’s self-esteem and both proved how wrong they were. Allergan used 12 different quality of life measures to compare augmentation patients before surgery and 2 years later.  Nine of the 12 (75%) were worse after the women got their breast implants, including self-esteem.  The results were similar for women getting Mentor breast implants. The women got worse in their self-reported physical health and mental health, with most showing no difference in their self-concept or how they felt about their body.’

Much more here: Why Breast Implants Are Not “For You”