The Official Breast

I've been reading more of Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, and was disturbed to find there is a type of pornography that fetishizes plastic surgery, particularly breast enhancement surgery. What's frightening about this is that not only are large breasts considered erotic, but the actual cutting and operating is erotic as well. Apparently Playboy has even published features of a few models' breast enhancement surgeries.

Anyway, I decided to talk a little bit about breast enhancement surgery in this post, especially since a lot of what Wolf thought about it seems to coincide with what people are currently saying about vaginal cosmetic surgery. Wolf writes about how media and advertising companies monitor and censor everything that is not what she calls "The Official Breast," leaving women unaware that there is an enormous range of what is normal when it comes to breasts:

"Looking at breasts in culture, one would have little idea that real breasts come in as many shapes and variations as there are women. Since most women rarely if ever see or touch other women's breasts , they have no idea what they feel like... Since beauty censorship keeps women in profound darkness about other women's real bodies, it is able to make virtually any woman feel that her breasts alone are too soft or low or sagging or small or big or weird or wrong" (Wolf 247).


This idea that the culture we live in excludes all but one ideal when it comes to breasts also applies to vulva. Women are very rarely exposed to any other woman's genitals, save for what she see in pornography. Because of this lack of exposure to the wide variety of shapes and sizes and colors of vulva, many women begin to feel they are abnormal. As Wolf put it, "Women are not cutting their breasts open for individual men, by and large, but so they can experience their own sexuality. In a diseased environment, they are doing this 'for themselves'" (Wolf 247). Perhaps this same theory applies to women who choose to have labiaplasty; even though it's painful and may end up desensitizing them during intercourse, they choose to take the risk to experience their sexuality.

Still, in light of this, I propose that during sex education in high school, the girls get to have a special seminar called "Labia Love," where they learn all about the vast variety in vulva in order to help promote happy, healthy body image.