France investigating link between bad breast implants and cancer. Fears over the safety of silicone breast implants made by a now defunct French firm spread to Australia, South America and across Europe on Thursday as French officials prepared to decide if thousands of women should have their implants surgically removed. The silicone gel implants, made by a company called Poly Implant Prosthese (PIP), appear to have an unusually high rupture rate and have sparked an investigation in France into possible links to cancer. Britain’s drugs watchdog the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said, however, that there was no reason for patients to be alarmed and stressed there is as yet no scientific evidence to suggest increased health risks.
MHRA officials said they had talked to other health or regulatory experts from France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Denmark and Malta. All those risks freak me out personally, but then again, I was also way too chicken to get a tattoo, even back in college when pretty much everyone was doing it. More importantly, as I’ve said before, every woman has to figure out her own relationship with beauty, and which standards she wants to accept, edit or reject. One woman’s Brazilian wax is another woman’s breast implants is another woman’s three-inch heels. To this end, I also fully support women who decide to skip all of that jazz.
What I hate is the way that any news involving breast implants gets twisted around into an opportunity to be judgmental as heck about “the type of woman” who would get them. Media coverage of this potential cancer risk is riddled with references to “Bridalplasty,” Heidi Montag, the chick who faked cancer to get implants, and that German porn star who died during her sixth implant surgery. On blogs and in water cooler conversations, we decide that all of these implant-getting women must be stupid, slutty and have insufferably low self-esteem. Even this pretty informative HuffPo piece on the risks associated with implants ends on a preachy note: “Consider loving the body Mother Nature gave you rather than playing Russian Roulette with your health and your life.” Because it’s that easy.
And yep, I’m guilty of this, too. I post stories like the German porn star and the first human bra because they are sadly newsworthy in the world of beauty analysis. And at Beauty U, my classmates and I were pretty snarky about the girl I called Our Heidi Montag. And breast implants aren’t the only way we all do this. We also hate on skinny models, criticize other women’s fashion decisions, and get bummed when our friend loses her baby weight faster than we do.
I’m over it. (And offering a general apology to the universe, as well as Our Heidi Montag and every other individual woman whom I’ve criticized over the years without knowing her full story.)
If you want to be mad about breast implants, be mad at Allergan and Mentor, the manufacturers of silicone breast implants who are making pots of money off the 300,000-odd American women who get them every year even though as Dr. Nalini Chilkov says in that HuffPo piece, “all breast implants will eventually break.”
