Why women need to stop giving money to an industry that hates them.

I don't know why anyone's surprised to learn that breast implants have accompanying health risks. I don't know why anyone's surprised to learn that implants containing industrial instead of medical silicone were put in hundreds of thousands of women's bodies. What I am surprised at, is the total failure of anyone to link this recent revelation with the total contempt the cosmetic surgery industry has for women's bodies.

Health scares are one thing. It's always cause for a media storm when a medical procedure or product is found to be substandard, potentially endangering people's health or even lives. But the word 'medical' should be our hint here - breast implants have nothing, nothing, nothing to do with medicine. Or health. Granted, in the case of breast cancer, it's entirely understandable why someone who has had a mastectomy would want reconstructive surgery - the same procedure is offered to men who have lost a testicle to cancer. Apart from these cases, which make up a tiny minority of women who get breast implants, the procedure has nothing to do with health or healing, and everything to do with women believing they are somehow lacking if they do not look a certain way. Who perpetuates this phenomenon, with adverts of pneumatically breasted, wrinkle-free, white-toothed women beaming down at us on the London Underground escalators? The cosmetic surgery industry. Who has a vested interest in women continuing to feel their bodies are inadequate and flawed? The cosmetic industry. And who, therefore, has the most to gain from wringing as much business as possible, with as great a profit margin as possible, out of women? I hardly need say it.

Why then, is anyone in the least bit shocked when a "corporation with economic objectives" admits that it used a "cheaper unapproved product" in its implants solely to save money? What is at all surprising about the head of the now defunct Poly Implant Prothese admitting that the product inserted into hundreds of thousands of women's chests "did not formally receive approval"? Why would anyone assume that a company that solely profits from women's insecurities would have any moral or ethical compunction about abusing women's bodies, seeings as that same company views the female body as mere economic chattel, the more sliced, diced and remoulded the better?

What we need to be up in arms about is not that someone has cheated, cut corners and endangered health purely for profit - this isn't the the first time it's happened, and as long as capitalism persists, it won't be the last. Where we should be directing our outrage is the cultural phenomena that made 300,000 women undergo entirely unnecessary elective major surgery, and have bags containing the same stuff you seal your bathroom tiles with, inserted into their already healthy and beautiful bodies. It's beside the point that the British chief medical officer is saying that there is no undue risk to British women and "advising against the routine removal of the implants." Anyone who really believes in and cares about women should be advising every woman with implants to get rid of them, dodgy product or not. Because they are nothing but vile emblems of society's contempt for the female body. Breast implants, and the industry that profits from them, are a constant symbol of women being told they are not good enough, and being crushed into submission by the monstrous industry that claims it can 'cure' them.

It shouldn't take a health scare for people to notice this. Most media outlets still seem afraid to comment on the obvious question begged by the scandal (why the fuck was anyone putting foreign bodies into their chest in the first place, let alone ones that might compromise their health?) and it almost seems to be because we're so resigned to the power wielded by the industry of false beauty, that no one can be bothered to challenge it any more. All the more reason then, to seize the moment that one of the big players in this vile, woman-hating arena has fallen on its sword, and start the fightback. Someone needs to stand up and say it - putting substandard implants into a woman's body may be inexcusable, but putting them in at all is what's really fucking ugly.

Disappointment with The Independent...

...for this Saturday's Essay by Susannah Frankel, "We fetishise the female form, and then condemn the wish to 'improve' it". Taking as its starting point the recent depressing news story of a British 20 year-old who died after an illegal cosmetic procedure, she basically goes on to defend the very culture which drove Claudia Aderotimi to her death. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that Frankel spends most of the article laying out the various bodily fashions that have been used to torment women over the years - from Rubens and Velasquez via Chanel and Twiggy, through to Kate Moss - as she is a fashion and beauty journalist. What I am dismayed about is her total failure to see these trends for what they all are - a way of tormenting the average women by holding up the most unattainable body types as the most desirable. The fleshy rolls and cellulite-dimpled thighs of Rubens' women were only considered beautiful because of their rarity value at a time when starvation and hard labour were a physical reality for the majority of any country's population. As the Depression and post-war austerity hampered the nation's diet, the well-nourished Mae West and Diana Dors were feted for their ample curves. Yet a few decades and a national conversion to cooking everything in lard later, and just as waistlines expanded, models contracted with the almost sinisterly boyish figures of the 60s fashion scene. I don't think I even need to follow the trend through to the modern day to demonstrate just how perverse and contemptuous of women fashion has always been.

What probably does sum that up nicely though, is the recent inversion of standards which then led this 20 year-old to get industrial silicone pumped into her buttocks. As Frankel points out, "After years of women over the world wondering "does my bum look big in this?", they [will] now be asking: "Does my bum look big enough?". The supposedly desirable female arse may have shifted away from being akin to that of a 12 year-old boy, and now at least be a bit bigger and more jiggly, but this should not be mistaken for progress or a female-friendly fashion world. The fact is, the standard remains as unrealistic and unattainable as ever. My backside probably isn't a million miles away from Beyonce's in terms of actual size, but it also happens to be white, dimpled, with a smattering of stretch marks, and unlike those pneumatic African-American butts, it generally points down rather than horizontally outwards. I'll never be able to fool myself that I'm anything like this woman, even if I can at least claim the meagre victory that at least she's not as emaciated as a grasshopper on Slimfast.

The woman-hating fashion industry will always set the bar just beyond women's grasp, even if it has got smart enough to start pretending that it is interested in promoting 'Real' body shapes. Anyway, I'm not sure Beyonce, a woman who admitted to living on lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper to lose weight for a film role, is someone to look up to - but that's another story. What galls me about Frankel's article is its total failure to acknowledge the misogynistic element to the very world which drove Claudia Aderotimi, and which drives thousands of women every year, to mutilate, distort and alter their bodies with an array of chemicals that'd put ICI to shame. Instead she simply narrates the tale of fashion's hateful treatment of women without any analysis of its implications. While she does admit that "it is not uncommon for designers...to use clothing to transform the female form into something closer to their personal ideal and further from anything nature intended", at no point does she consider or state how very fucked up that is. She even has the audacity to say that whether fashion's distortion of the female form is responsible for harm to women, "is the subject of much debate"; erm, when people are dying from injecting something you might use to seal bathroom tiles into their arses, I'm not sure exactly where the room for debate is.

Of course I'm not endorsing the ridiculously simplistic approach that dictates all eating disorders = the result of seeing thin models in magazines, because eating disorders are complex psychological conditions which are still not fully understood. But cosmetic procedures, be they an Elizabethan women putting lead on her face, or a 17 year-old girl wanting breast implants, have a much simpler, more obvious, and less debatable root. Namely, a society that tells women they are ugly and worthless, and that changing their bodies is the only way to fulfilment. And why does society do this? Well, even if Naomi Wolf has lost all credibility in recent times, her original argument still stands: when women start gaining more rights, it's in the interests of those who feel threatened by that phenomenon, to erode their confidence in any way possible. And the most effective method for that? Still, sadly, making people feel ugly. Frankel also makes the slightly bizarre point that "we are a basically Protestant nation, mistrustful of everything from expensive clothing to face, breast and now, bottom lifts", going on to say that this 'social disapproval' was what further endangered Aderotimi's life because her embarrassment about the procedure meant she didn't tell anyone what she was going to the US for.

Firstly, I have to take issue with this freakish logic that says pursuit of the latest Katherine Hammett outfit is somehow on a par with bodily mutilation - there just is no parallel, sorry. I also take issue with being labelled 'Protestant' for objecting to the promotion of a culture and its associated practices that are both physically and mentally poisonous to women. I don't disapprove because I'm 'not fun' or have some neo-Cromwellian objection to fun, frippery, glitz or gloss. I disapprove because the culture that promotes cosmetic surgery and the altering of the female form for the approval of others is a culture that HATES WOMEN and is now KILLING WOMEN (see also - Kanye West's mother for a famous example of a cosmetic surgery fatality). That's where my mind really boggles - at Frankel's apportioning the blame for Aderotimi's death to a prurient, purse-lipped society instead of the real culprit. For a start, saying that a country where Nuts magazine, Botox and Ann Summers flourish is a country opposed to indulgence, is simply bollocks. But even if it was the fear of disapproval that caused Aderotimi to sneak off to the States in silence, it was not disapproval that killed her. It was cosmetic surgery. Frankel is right to say that it's hypocritical to 'fetishise the female form, and then condemn the wish to 'improve' it'. What we should be condemning is the treatment of the female form as society's plaything, and I don't care how far back into the history of fashion and art Frankel can trace that practice, because historical persistence alone does not make something right.

Gender-blindness Is A Dangerous Condition

...especially when it comes to documentaries such as last night's The Ugly Face of Beauty on Channel 4. There seemed to be some good intention mixed in with all the mixed messages, but really it was a gigantic wasted opportunity to point out just why the promotion of cosmetic surgery is so hateful towards women. Instead, the programme focused on 'when surgery goes wrong', therefore neatly implying that having your breasts, stomach or face hoicked all over the shop by a surgeon is fine, as long as it's done right. Arrrghh.

While it's certainly criminal that there's so little regulation in the plastic surgery industry, and that cowboy surgeons are getting away with ruining people's bodies and lives, that seems to me to be an issue for Watchdog or Panorama - not an opportunity for a cosy pseudo-documentary on Channel 4 where on the one hand we can giggle at the maimed bodies of naive idiots who just wanted to look beautiful, and on the other still somehow fail to condemn the cosmetic surgery industry altogether. And why should it be condemned? Because, and I don't think this is too strong a statement, it is a form of insidious violence against women. Yes, women. Not a single case named on last night's programme was male. When the makers set up a 'fake clinic' in Essex city centre, luring customers in to sign up for surgical procedures with no advice, qualifications or regulation, everyone who entered the 'clinic' was female. Men were entirely absent from the documentary (apart from their presence as surgeons, of course), yet the makers seemed entirely blind to this fact and keep referring to 'people', 'patients' and 'the public' as being sucked in by the dubious tactics of the cosmetic surgery industry.

My mind boggles at this attitude, especially as it was screamingly obvious to me that the programme could and should have been titled "The Ugly Face of Beauty And How Women Are Affected By It". Without even needing to try, the programme showed in painful detail just how pressured, coerced and brainwashed so many women are into thinking that their breasts must resemble watermelons, their stomachs should be flat if not concave, and that wrinkled faces are a sign of evil which must be wiped out. It showed how the industry teaches women to hate and mistrust their bodies and believe that the answer lies in a surgeon's scalpel, and how ultimately proponents of CS wish to homogenise the ideal of beauty to the terrifying drag-queen-gone-wrong archetype described above. I can understand that gory scars and grossly misshaped breasts are more of a viewing pull than feminist analysis, but having lured the public in with the sensationalist maiming, couldn't the makers have at least made some kind of point about how the hatred the beauty industry perpetuates is clearly gendered? They clearly weren't afraid to criticise the cosmetic surgery profession up to a point, but chickened out short of proposing that perhaps one of the reasons surgeons don't seem to care if they botch a procedure on a woman's body, is that they have nothing but contempt for the female form.

It was particularly disappointing to see the presenter of the programme, Dr Christian Jessen, tell a lady who had been duped by the 'fake clinic' that 'there's nothing wrong with you wanting cosmetic surgery', but scolding her to make sure a doctor is legitimate and trustworthy first. To me, this is about as morally acceptable as telling a black person that it's fine to bleach their skin, just make sure you read the ingredients on the packet first. The point is not about information, regulation or any of that. It's about just how twisted and brimming with hate for women cosmetic surgery procedures are in the first place. But the makers of the programme seemed to be too worn down by the modern acceptance of contempt for the female body, to even consider that.

Getting lippy

An interesting article on BBC News questions both the safety and ethics of 'designer vaginas', i.e. the rising trend of labiaplasty amongst western women. The gist is that senior gynaecologists and psychologists have started questioning the reasoning behind blowing £3,000 to cut perfectly normal, healthty tissue out of one's genitals in order to achieve a 'homogenised, pre-pubescent' appearance. Thank god someone is finally speaking out.

Naturally, plastic surgeons are staunchly defending the procedure, citing women's right to mutilate themselves, the influence of lads' mags, and the syndrome (?) of 'hypertrophy' where 'the tissue is dark and hangs down'. Hmm, we wouldn't be pathologising perfectly normal genitalia in order to line our pockets a bit more, now would we? It's a bit like asking a turkey farmer if they're in favour of Christmas - you're not exactly gonna get an answer that doesn't betray a vested interest, now are you? Why the BBC even bothered giving these people a voice I'm not sure - they don't interview drug dealers for 'their side of the story' when reporting on heroin problems, after all.

I've wondered for a while why no one has identified the irony in the fact we fight against and fiercely condemn women having their genitals mutilated in 3rd world countries, yet here we're happy to pay £3,000 for the privilege. The only real difference is the setting in which the mutilations take place - in Somalia you may have your labia chopped off with a piece of broken glass in the middle of a forest courtesy of a village elder, in Britain you'll have it done under sterile surgical conditions in a nice clean hospital. But the motivation is the same - namely the notion that women's genitals are wrong/grotesque, and must be changed.

The medical profession definitely need to do more to identify the madness in undertaking such procedures, as the media isn't interested in doing so. Instead, TV programme-makers sanction and compound public interest in women surgically altering their genitals, in programmes such as Designer Vaginas and Embarrassing Bodies. The latter programme (which has, tellingly, altered its title from Embarrassing Illnesses, probably because it shows a lot of conditions where there is nothing medically wrong with the person) has shown two women coming in on separate occasions, bemoaning the length of their labia. I'll step up to the plate right now and say that my labia are probably longer/more protruding than either of them, and their vaginas looked completely normal to me. Instead of reassuring the women and suggesting perhaps some counselling or confidence-building therapy about their bodies, the doctors on the show sent them both for operations to get their labia trimmed. Nice message to send out. Don't have a tuppence like a porn star? Get thee to Harley Street and spend a whack of money that'd get you a new car, part of a house or at the least a holiday on a nude beach to see what real vaginas look like, on trimming a few millimetres off your lady lips.

Sigh.

A poster on Feministing made me smile by defending her 'big sexy labia' before cheekily adding 'still hurts to ride a bike though!'. True, having big labia can be a bit of a pain - they get in the way during sex, rub during biking/horse-riding, and require an extra-attentive sense of personal hygiene. But, um, so frigging what? Bodies in all their glory can be a pain in 1000 different ways, and we don't rush all down to the nearest body-butcher to get bits chopped off in order to remedy that, even though that's what cosmetic surgeons would have us do in the name of 'returning our confidence to us'.

The trend towards unquestioningly encouraging people to undergo serious surgery under the flimsiest of pretexts is worrying, and it's good to see some medical professionals speaking up against it. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't worried and wondered about my labia over the years - whether they're freakish, unattractive and in need of a trim. But when I observe this sickening trend of portraying normal female flesh as requiring medical intervention, I become fiercely proud of them; and yes, it does help that my partner is very enamoured with them. No, I don't derive my self-esteem solely from male approval, but it's just nice to have the viral myths of porn and lads' mags debunked by a real live man. After all, we hear very little from the actual men in aid of whom these procedures are presumably, or at least in part, performed. As Jo Brand pointed out, labiaplasty is an operation undertaken 'for your doctor, and your partner' and no one else (because who else knows or cares, was her point). And who says that men demand a certain kind of vagina, apart from the magazines and films that purport to speak for them? I think if we asked real men, who are having sex with real, unaltered women, their answers would range from 'couldn't care less' to actually positively liking more visible genitalia on their women. But instead we let the media and cash-happy scalpel jocks tell us what's hot and what's not below the waist. We've really got to wise up and start thinking for ourselves again. When did we stop?

In The Independent today...

Janet Street Porter gives it to us straight re: the latest church argy-bargy over women bishops.
"Should we care what contorted antics pass for modern debate in a church most of us only occasionally make use of?...After all, if any other organisation in Britain did not give women full equality of opportunity, they would be taken to an industrial tribunal. Yet this mob use the name of God to perpetrate a clear injustice - who said that religion causes more divisions than anything else?"

As a committed atheist, I generally couldn't care less what concessions a cult responsible for justifiying ill-treatment of women and gays, encouraging population explosions and the spread of AIDS, masking child sexual abuse by its own members, and turning a blind eye to the various violent crusades made in its name, are making or failing to make to women. I have no respect for religion and don't see that I am obliged to pretend otherwise. I accept I have no right to oppress, abuse or discriminate against religious people (shame many of them do not feel the same about women, gays or whichever other group they've got a bee in their bonnet about this week). However, I utterly reject that religion should be the basis or justification for anyone else's whim to discriminate against a group they may have a beef with, and so I'm glad Ms Street-Porter is willing to go up against the PC brigade and say so. If you hate women or gays, just say it and don't hide behind a millennia-old book to justify it - I'll still think you're a vile idiot, but may have a smidge more respect for your honesty. I respect the validity of using religion as a basis for discrimination about as much as I respect the logic of a schizophrenic who stabs someone because the voices in their head told them to do it. So, sock it to them Janet.

"How can we talk about treating all religions with respect, if a large group of clerics in our own Church of England want to treat women and gays as second-class citizens?"

And wasn't it good old' JC himself who said 'you are neither slave nor free, Greek nor Hebrew, man nor woman, for you are all one in Christ?'. And never preached against homosexuality, or the equal status of women? Leave all the bile to the original hater, St Paul - he had a recurring need to put down those gays. Or maybe he was just a closet case. Would explain why he wasn't so sprung on the ladies either...

In other news, The Indy - which seems to be getting worryingly trashy with its excitable and detailed reporting of Max Mosley and Ronnie Wood's respective extra-marital shame - also ran an item on the increasing demand for male cosmetic surgery. According to the article, a Harley street clinic has reported a 51 per cent increase over the past year of men undergoing tummy tucks, 44 per cent increase in chin lifts, a 17 per cent increase in facelifts, and a 57 per cent increase in Botox treatments. Work pressures and having younger wives (?!) are cited in the article as the source of men's fears.

If I was one of those unfortunate ladies who jumped on the feminist bandwagon just to have an legitimate outlet for all my grievances against men, I might enjoy this article, find a sort of twisted justice in it. But I'm not in the sisterhood to bash men. It doesn't please me to hear that, instead of both sexes standing up and rejecting the bullshit that insists we mutilate our bodies and inject poison into our faces (because that's what Botox is, ladies and gents - a poison), the sex that was previously untouched by it, is falling under the axe too. Now men are becoming just as self-destructive as women in the quest for the body beautiful, should women see this as a victory? Couples discount at the Harley Medical Clinic - breast enlargement for her, penis augmentation for him, lobotomy for both? I don't think so. If my dad came home and announced he wanted Botox, after peeling my jaw off the floor (my dad is the type who will wear socks with sandals and be blissfully oblivious to any embarrassment he has caused to himself and those around him), I'd beg him to reconsider because, apart from it being medically dangerous and a huge waste of time and money, I'm not sure I could respect him. Enough damage has been wreaked on the psyches of women by the pointless expectations placed on their appearances - dragging men down to the same desperate level is only going to make us an even more wretched society than we're already becoming.

As in the words of those wonderful activists who slap stickers on adverts for cosmetic surgery that assault you as you're sweating your way up the escalators on the London Underground,
"YOU ARE NORMAL. THIS IS NOT."