Stacked Like Me

"O, reason not the need:/Our basest beggars/Are in the poorest thing superfluous."

--King Lear

No one needs larger breasts, it's true, and neither do I. Yet here I am, in the office of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon: Mecca for the mammarily challenged. It's the middle of a fall weekday afternoon and I'm anything but alone in this girlish waiting room, with its faux-antique furnishings, flower motifs and art prints in cheery colors. There's a heavily made-up matron with a bleached blonde bouffant, her hangdog husband in tow. A stylish, large black woman is talking with somebody named Sherman on her cell phone. And then there's me--a short, sweats-clad journalist in her 30s, filling out the forms I've just been given.

As I wade through four pages of medical-history questions, I overhear the office manager fielding calls. "That's right. Her breasts are two totally different sizes. I always order an extra one in case something's wrong. That's why I need this one too, for Thursday. OK, thanks." Click. "Hello, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Hey there, woman! How are you doing? How are your breasts?"

After a while, I'm called in. I'm not used to discussing my breasts, let alone displaying them in all their minimalist splendor, so I'm a little nervous. I think, Maybe I shouldn't have worn a Wonderbra. Fortunately, visions of décolletage keep me motivated, and soon the doctor arrives. "Hi. Sorry to keep you waiting, I'm Dr.----" Wait a minute, hold it. What's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? I'm not centerfold material, not by a long shot. Rather than a 36-26-36 with a Data Sheet, I'm a B.A.-M.A.-M.F.A. with a curriculum vitae. My turn-ons are well-articulated arguments, not limbs, and my turnoffs run more toward misplaced modifiers and boilerplate prose than, say, "mean people" and "bullies." Nor am I an actress, model or stripper--the kind of woman who needs nice tits the way I need a modem and a fax machine. As a print journalist, I don't get extra points for looks.

I should also mention that I consider myself a feminist. Sure, I know the party line on breast augmentation--that women who have the surgery are the oppressed victims of a patriarchal culture. In a word, boobs. In fact, I used to teach feminist theory at Yale and the University of California. But the moldy notion that boob jobs are a sign, or even a part, of women's oppression has seen its day. It's an insult to female intelligence. Jane Fonda knew what she was doing, and so do I.

So do many women today--almost 50,000 a year, according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. The bosom business is booming. Like jet travel, the surgical fix has gone middle class. More than half of the plastic surgery procedures today are performed on people who make less than $50,000 a year. Yet our thinking on the topic lags way behind.

Why are so many women having their tits fixed? It's not because we're regressing, despite what the return of polyester pantsuits suggests. On the contrary, it's because women have more power today. Once, the boob job symbolized the way that women were treated as objects, locked out of the mainstream, kept beneath the glass ceiling. But today it stands more as a sign that women have gained power, that they've become subjects rather than objects of history. Some men pride themselves on being self-made. Now women are free to become self-made. The boob job has become the latest expression of the American love of self-creation.

Now, I'm not saying that boob jobs aren't the invention of testosterone culture. Of course they are. Of course our society is still sexist. But that's not going to change any time soon. Here's the choice: You can rail at an imperfect world, or go get yourself a great pair of bazongas. Which I did.

California or Bust

My mother has large, lovely breasts. When I was a girl, we used to call them her pookies (rhymes with cookies), though I'm not sure why. She and my father raised me to be a feminist. I've always found these two family facts complementary, not contradictory. Naturally, I picked up the ideology. I also inherited my dad's chest.

As an adolescent growing up in California during the Seventies, I didn't give much thought to breasts, mine or anyone else's. I had decent ones for my age. Besides, the Brady girls weren't exactly stacked either, as I recall. I was horse crazy and spent most of my TV time with Mr. Ed, so maybe I didn't pay enough attention. I wasn't thinking about a boob job for myself back then--plastic surgery wasn't yet a common practice. It was something only movie stars did, largely because only they could afford it.

Many years later, following a teaching stint in New Haven, I moved back to California, where I taught at UCSD and UCLA. This was in the late Eighties, and I was lecturing to students who didn't know much about the women's lib movement. Frequently, I'd include feminist criticism in my courses, and that would prompt discussions of such matters as the case against "beauty" practices. For those of you who cut class or slept through the Seventies, here's a quick review.

Basically, the classic feminist objection to boob jobs and the like is that women shouldn't conform to male-created ideals of beauty. Although Barbie was created by a woman, the sisters have a point. It's that unnatural, ultra-skinny-yet-stacked standard, after all, that prompts so many girls to starve, loathe and otherwise abuse themselves. Yes, women are judged by their jugs. If you don't buy that, flip forward a few pages and tell me what you see.

The question for a woman is how to deal with this, and that's where I part ways with the bra-burners. For today's female, maintaining self-esteem is partly about damage control. You have to recognize the point at which battling an oppression (or an oppressor) takes more energy than it's worth. If you spend too much effort fighting something or someone, that thing still has power over you. It's sometimes better to acknowledge that the injustice exists and get on with your life.

Let's consider an example: If a teenager is so self-conscious about his acne that he won't leave the house, the zits, you might say, have won. But if a little dermatology clears things up and makes the kid more comfortable going out, the zits have been neutralized. Or let's take it even closer to home, into the gender-specific zone. Men have hair transplants and penis enlargements, but people don't presume they do it to conform to a female-created ideal, or to please women. So why are women who have their tits done thought to be oppressed by male standards, or seen as trying to please men? Sure, it would be great if we lived in a world where all body shapes and sizes were equally valued, and neither men nor women felt the need to "correct" something that's not wrong in the first place. But we don't. Fortunately, anatomy isn't destiny. At least not anymore.

Off the Rack

It had been a slow year. I was in a career rut that was nothing to titter about. My morale was in need of a boost--something more than a haircut and less than a life overhaul. I'm lousy at vacations and don't really like them. So I was having trouble thinking of what I could do to give myself a lift, as it were. Finally, a lightbulb went on above my head. Or maybe it was a glowing teat.

Once I'd decided to look into a boob job--an idea I'd toyed with for years--I put my journalistic skills to work. My research began with the aesthetics of breast size. If anything were possible--and I didn't know how much could be made of what little I had--did I want to be bodacious or merely buxom? There is such a thing as too big.

The more important question was about health. I have friends who've found lumps, so I wanted to know what effect, if any, saline implants might have on my mammograms. As it turned out, the answer is probably none. (A word here about silicone implants. Despite the Dow Corning product-liability settlement in 1994, the scientific evidence that has emerged since then has failed to prove a correlation between the implants and the autoimmune diseases reported by some women. Studies at both Harvard and the Mayo Clinic have found that women who have implants aren't any more likely to contract immune-system disorders than women who don't have them. Siding with the scientists, the courts have also rejected women's complaints. But it doesn't matter anyway, since the Food and Drug Administration took silicone implants off the market in 1992.)

During this reconnaissance mission, I became boob-obsessed. I amassed a stack of publications. My in-depth reading ranged from D-Cup magazine ("Bra-bustin' Lesbos in Heat," "Please Squeeze My Big Ones") to the FDA-Department of Health and Human Services' bulletin Information for Women Considering Saline-filled Breast Implants.

I also began making note of beauty molls in the culture, from the Roseanne show to the Queen Nefertiti exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The redone Roseanne, who had struck a postop pose on the cover of Vanity Fair, was now paying weekly tribute to her surgical transformation with a series of stills in the opening credits of her TV show. And when she and her fictional hubby struck it rich in the show's plot, Roseanne Conner announced that she was going to "get me a ton of plastic surgery." I admire her candor--Cher's, too. Both are also outspoken feminists.

There are plenty of feminists who have had plastic surgery. Most of them just don't talk about it. (And I'm not going to out them.) What needs to be acknowledged, by these women and others, is that boob jobs aren't incompatible with feminist goals. If implants make a woman feel better about herself, why not? Even old-school feministas, after all, would go to the mat for a woman's right to do what she wants with her body.

For many women, the boob job is a career move, though not because of the change it makes in their appearance. Just as a sports car can make a man feel successful, a great pair of maracas can make a woman feel, well, uplifted--or, more to the point, confident.

We all create ourselves--whether it's how we look or what we choose to say, do and believe. To be the author of one's own fate, and by extension one's self, is part of the Western notion of the heroic. When Shakespeare's Coriolanus announces that he's not going to be a wimp anymore, he says he'll "stand,/As if a man were author of himself,/And knew no other kin." If Coriolanus were alive today, he'd at least have an ab-cruncher.

In which Lois Shows me Her Boob

Once I had the skinny on augmentation mammaplasty--not to mention a fierce desire to fill the white beaded bustier that waited in my bedroom--I began the doctor hunt. I'd already weeded out the schlockmeisters, the ones who really aren't specialists but are just dabbling in a lucrative field. Then, working from a list of ASPRS-certified doctors I'd compiled, I started making the rounds.

The first couple of doctors patronized me to the point of distraction, telling me what to do with my breasts, as well as what other body parts I ought to consider remodeling. Then I happened upon Dr. Harry Marshak. An L.A.-raised prodigy who graduated from medical school at 22, he's as credentialed as they come and up on all the latest techniques. He's also a congenial workaholic with a touch of shyness around the edges, a clean-cut guy's guy who fits the occasional Lakers game into his six-day workweek.

What I liked best about Dr. Marshak, though, was that he listened well and gave direct answers to my questions. I wasn't thrilled that he was young and attractive. Somehow, having my less-than-best feature scrutinized, poked and pondered would have been easier if the doctor were a sexless codger, or at least legally blind. But you can't have everything.

Dr. Marshak is quite a busy man. Lately, he tells me during one early visit, he has been turning out tits like tribbles. "I'm doing at least three or four breast surgeries a week, sometimes more," he says. "It's the most popular." He explains the procedure. When we turn to the matter of just how generously endowed I would like my own foundations to be, Dr. Marshak produces a copy of a well-known magazine to help define the terms. "That's Karen [not her real name], one of our clients," he says. "Now these," he says, pointing to another pair, "are probably large Cs. Hers are maybe small Cs. Those are definitely Ds." Given that I'm short and not looking to put Heather Hooters out of work any time soon, we agree that I want large Cs or possibly small Ds.

Lois, Dr. Marshak's office administrator, is a petite, vivacious woman of about 30. It's her job to go over the specifics and answer whatever further questions the patients may have. When we're alone, she produces a mug book of before-and-after shots. I learn that the procedure, including follow-up visits, will cost $5600 (plus $176 in lab fees, not to mention parking), and that I probably won't lose any time from work. Lois then mentions that the doctor recently did her boobs and even pulls up her shirt to show me one, so that I can see what the finished product looks like. I'm no connoisseur, but it looks great to me. Lois says she did it for herself.

That rings a bell. This is about my self-image, certainly not my husband's image of me (the idea of a boob job, unlike, say, voting trends from various L.A. precincts, has never crossed his mind). Lois and I may be pretty far apart on a number of demographic indicators, but on this (and a penchant for purple nail polish) we are in sync. Some feminists (and a lot of other ists, for that matter) tend to dismiss what Jane Doe has to say about why she does what she does: Poor Jane labors under false consciousness, of course. But I know it's not just me, Lois and Jane who feel this way.

Still, the boob job is a magnet for some of the most retro feminist myths, such as: Only bimbos want larger breasts. Or that women do it to gratify their men. Oh please. I am woman, hear me snore. By and large, guys, this bud's not for you. But you do get to enjoy the view.

Stacked Like me

The early morning fog has yet to rise when I do, around four A.M. on an October morning. An hour later, a town car arrives to drive me to the surgery center. It is driven by a mustachioed Armenian émigré who calls himself Jack, though his real name is Yacob. I get in the backseat and we head west. After a mile or so, the silence hangs heavy. I try to be conversational, which is a stretch at this hour. I ask if he has children--it turns out that he has a 14-year-old daughter--and this triggers a sad story that lasts most of the rest of the crosstown drive.

Yacob married young, but his wife was "sick in the head" from an early age, as he explains in his not-quite-fluent English. I'm not sure what he means, but it sounds like some kind of intermittent mental illness. Her parents, it seems, believed that once their daughter was married, her ailment would disappear. Needless to say, it didn't. A downward spiral of violent episodes and what sounds like severe depression ensued. Finally, Yacob prevailed upon a doctor to explain his wife's illness to him and then became furious at her parents for having done nothing for so long. Treatment was begun, probably too late, and the young wife died while awaiting an operation of some kind.

This is one hell of a story to hear on the way to a boob job, but it puts things in perspective. The wife's tale--particularly her parents' reluctance to admit their daughter's problem, perhaps because they feared not being able to marry her off or some other social stigma--strikes me as a good example of the oppression millions of women still suffer. A voluntary breast augmentation, by contrast, does not.

We arrive at the Beverly Hills Ambulatory Surgery Center, on the fourth floor of a Sunset Strip high-rise, and I part ways with Yacob. Inside the office, I sign the consent forms and then repair to a dressing room, where I trade my clothes for a paper gown and shower cap. Soon, I'm on the table with an IV in my arm, trying to convince the nurses that they don't need to remove my nose ring. Dr. Marshak arrives and we go into the bathroom, where he takes some "before" photos. He then brandishes a felt-tip pen and proceeds to draw his battle plan on my body. Back on the bed, I start floating off into drugland. The last thing I remember is a parting glance at the anesthesiologist's chest hair (quite nice), which is peeking out over the V-neck of his scrubs.

When I wake up, there's a small gaggle of nurses hovering over me, cooing about how happy I'm going to be with my new breasts. I glance down and--lo and behold, yes!--there's a bundle of joy on my chest, and it's not a baby. The bandaged area above my rib cage is protruding. Noticeably. Wow. The miracle of modern science.

Postopscript

I've had bigger bazooms for four months now. My erstwhile barely Bs are now borderline Ds. Formal dress events have become cleavage-display opportunities. And lingerie shopping isn't just a job, it's an adventure.

My career is still not where I would like it to be, but I do feel better about it for having increased my bra size. The boob job, you see, made me focus on how far I've come: At the very least, I have arrived at a point where I can go out and buy myself a new pair of headlights if I want to. As Dr. Marshak suggested at the end of one of my postop visits, "If somebody asks if they're yours, tell them, 'Yes, I bought them myself.'"

What's most satisfying is that these home improvements--are you with me, Martha S.?--were my own doing. OK, mine and Dr. Marshak's. Instead of continuing to feel self-conscious about a feature that had bothered me for years, I changed it. Despite what our current victim culture tells us, it's as simple as that. It was time and money well spent. If I had another pair, I would do it again. And I got an article out of it to boot. What more could a girl ask for?

My cups runneth over.

As journalists sign off, 30 (well, 34D).