Breast implants (with added disclaimer)

[Orrex]

Different from body-piercing in degree or in kind?

Discuss.

on edit: I should mention that my personal preference is no implants, and I'm not a big fan of piercings, for that matter. But if a person gets them of her own free will, then I certainly don't begrudge her that, either

[MiniMandaRuth]

1. I dunno...

They don't react weirdly to magnets when you walk by them? :shrug:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. I don't set off any metal detectors.

People always think I must set them off at the airport, but nope, I don't.

[MiniMandaRuth]

9. Hench the shrugging smiley.

Hey. People think I'm weird because I have blue hair. :crazy:

[Orrex]

13. No, I think you're weird because I don't know what "Hench" means

Me, I never make typoss.

:evilgrin:

[MiniMandaRuth]

19. DAMMIT!

Annie the Typo Gimp strikes again!!!

[Orrex]

11. A friend years ago

Was in a car accident and needed an abdominal x-ray. Her below-the-belt ornamentation surprised the techs, in large part because that kind of piercing hadn't yet become popular around that town...

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

15. My dentist is always amused by my nose screw showing up on x-rays.

[Gato Moteado]

26. i'm not sure i want to ask what a "nose screw" is......

....but if it's a sexual position, it sounds painful.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

27. It's just the way the jewelery is shaped.

There's no backing on a nose stud, so the post is screw-shaped. This way it stays in your nose without having a backing on it.

[Ohio Joe]

2. Without good reason...

I can't stand them. There are plenty of legit reason implants might be required but when a women does it just because she thinks she is too small, I find it a real turn off.

[Beer Snob-50]

3. both the same in my humble opinion

defacing a perfectly good body for no good reason.

[SeattleGirl]

7. What if a woman had a mastectomy? Would implants in that

case be okay? Not being a smart-ass. I do understand what you're saying as far as women who get implants just to do it, but if there is a reason such as mastectomy, what do you think?

[Beer Snob-50]

12. I guess I was talking about breast implants for the sake of

bigger breasts. in your scenerio (sp) i retract my statement.

[SeattleGirl]

17. I thought that might be the case, but thanks for clarifying.

:hi:

[Beer Snob-50]

18. **wipes brow***

i thought i was in for a good butt whipping there.

[SeattleGirl]

21. LOL!

You're safe! BTW, I love your user name. A Pirate Looks at 40 is my favorite Jimmy Buffett song!

[Orrex]

22. Jimmy Buffett has more than one song?

Who knew?

:shrug:


:evilgrin:

[SeattleGirl]

28. Oh my, Orrex, you have lived SUCH a sheltered life!

:rofl:

[Orrex]

42. Wait a minute...

Are you counting the different verses of title removed by the hyperlitigious Mr. Buffett as different songs? Maybe that would get you to three or four total songs, but really that's all I can think of.

Are you sure he had more than that?

:evilgrin:

[Beer Snob-50]

24. thanks

that is a great song. the name is from his book of the same name.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

10. Well, a lot of people wouldn't consider it defacing in either case.

Piercings can also be removed, if you decide you don't want them.

[LeftyMom]

4. It's just a teeny bit easier to take a piercing out if needed.

Neither one looks at all natural but piercings can look right on somebody. Implants never do, they don't move like breast tissue at all and look fake and unattractive.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

5. As someone who's pierced...completely different.

Personally, I'm not a fan of implants. You can also always remove a piercing if you don't like it. Not so easy with the implants.

[Orrex]

8. So...

If ease-of-removal is the criterion, that would be a difference in degree, no?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

14. I also don't feel that plastic surgery and tattoos/piercings are the same

thing. Many people have tattoos or piercings to commenorate something or for a personal/symbolic meaning. To me that's just different than having silicone boobs.

[Orrex]

16. In that case, I guess I agree

Of course, who's to say whether some other person has pierced him/herself as a commemoration or because it's a fad?

By the same token, who's to say whether some woman got implants simply because she wanted to or because they're a fad?

[conflictgirl]

31. I agree

Not surprisingly, I'm pierced as well (though only my nose and ears these days).

A piercing is very easy to remove, and getting a piercing or removing one is much less complicated and invasive than surgery. It's true that both piercings and implants are forms of body modification, but implants are a lot more extreme and a lot riskier.

[Vidar]

20. Two of the reasons strip clubs no longer appeal to me.

[RedCloud]

23. Locking. Thread too titillating.

:blush:

[LiberalHeart]

25. I don't like tattoos or piercings because....

...it's defacing the body permanently. At least the piercing jewelry can be removed easily, but tattoos seem like a poor choice for anyone who expects to live more than three years. Just as we change the art on our walls, it would seem natural for people to want to change their body art over time as they evolve, or as tastes change, etc.

But implants are a whole other thing -- something I oppose and try to talk women out of. I got them during reconstruction after a double mastectomy. I was reluctant (a doc told me I was just in denial if I thought I didn't want them, and I didn't know how to argue with that) and I asked several people for their opinion ahead of time. Every woman I asked said "get 'em" ... every man tried to talk me out of it. That surprised me.

I was sick within eight weeks of getting them and for years it felt like having a chronic, daily flu. I hurt all over, felt like manure, was fatigued and when I wanted them removed, I had to go through all kinds of trouble -- first in getting a surgeon who'd do it, then in getting my insurance company to pay for the removal (they insisted it was "cosmetic surgery" to give me a flat chest). I got a lawyer who pointed out to the insurance company that they covered reconstructive surgery, and all I wanted was to have my post-mastectomy chest reconstructed. That worked, along with threatening to sue.

They even found me a surgeon, one who had turned me down previously. He said he considered it vandalism to leave me with just scars. I told him I considered those scars symbolic of my cancer cure and they didn't bother me at all. He couldn't understand that.

I didn't have silicone implants (except for the outer envelope). They were saline filled. But they still set up a systemic inflammatory process in my body, and it was hell. Really. Don't ever get them because you could be one of those rare people, like me, who react that way. I felt better the first month they were gone, then even better every month after that for about a year, and then I was back to my old self.

[never cry wolf]

29. Best friend recently got implants, I hate em....

She is a very slim and petite woman, always has been.... IMHO she was perfect and now resembles a tootsie pop, she went way overboard.......

but then she didn't ask me my opinion......

I even posted a poll here with before and after pics (before it got locked) and the consensus was before.... I'd be happy to share those pics with a pm...

om edit: maybe as much a consensus was "great gams!"

[Ramsey]

30. Well, getting implants IS a surgery

I'm torn on this one. A good friend of mine got them, but she was VERY flat chested. Generally, those women that get them because they want to go from normal to buxom end up looking pretty trashy IMHO, but hey, it's a free coutnry. For now.

Body piercings probably bother me les, although I am still not sure why anyone would want to pierce their tongue. That just seems highly inconvenient.

[idgiehkt]

32. the problem I think is that you have complications.

alot of women have horrible, horrible complications from it that ruin their health. The saline ones are encased in a silicon envelope so you still have silicon even with the 'safe' ones.

I wonder if there are any accurate statistics out there on the amount of complications from them. I've heard way too many horror stories to consider it.

Isn't it considered 'major surgery'? I heard an actual doctor refer to them like this one time and it surprised me, that's why she said that she would never do it.

[LeftyMom]

33. To hide the scar they either

cut at the nipple or cut at the navel and tunnel up these days. I can't inagine having post-surgical pain and bruising everywhere between my collarbone and navel. Then again, I can't imagine having a permanently implanted foreign body without a damned good reason. I suppose it's a good thing I'm fairly okay with my boobs, dispite thier lack of size.

[idgiehkt]

34. "tunnel up"?

that made me shiverrrr...

tunnel up? I'm trying to imagine what that's like; the mental picture i get is like cutting fabric for a pattern. Or maybe they go under the skin. I think alot of the women get abscesses and infections and stuff, too.

[LeftyMom]

35. They make a channel between the skin and muscle layers

I should quit watching Discovery Health. Nothing good ever comes of watching it, I either feel sick to my stomach or cry.

[idgiehkt]

36. I watch that and Court TV at night.

The people who die from gruesome injuries and the people who almost die from gruesome injuries, take your pick.

I didn't know about this tunneling up thing. The really gross surgery, I think, is the reduction, where they excise the nipple, toss it aside, jack the breast up and slap the nipple back on. That surgery is probably a psycho killer's wet dream.

[LeftyMom]

38. They do that sometimes in boob jobs if the nipple isn't in the right place

anymore, common when going up several cup sizes or when doing a lift with the augmentation. It strikes me as so mysoginist- the nipple loses all feeling and becomes a mere accessory to a breast that's usually being operated on at least partly to be more pleasing to men.

[idgiehkt]

39. I think sometimes they go in through the nipple as well.

I don't know why they just don't make a pair of toy fake breasts for women to give to their partners to play with. There doesn't seem to be a good way to get that implant into the breast and keep it there without infection. I'm not giving up my nipple twinges, lol.

[Lars39]

37. It seriously messes with the stomach muscles.

[LiberalHeart]

40. After a mastectomy, it's a lot of surgeries...

I went into it not knowing what all was involved; the doc never mentioned the many steps I'd have to go through. I thought there was one surgery and it was all over.

But first there was the empty implant. They insert it under the skin then pump in saline through a port. Over the course of many weeks there were follow up visits to have the tissue expander enlarged with more saline. They do this gradually so the skin isn't all of a sudden stretched a lot. Once you get to the size you've decided to be, they take you back to surgery, remove the tissue explanders and put in the actual implants. Then comes the nipple. Because nipples are removed during a mastectomy, the plastic surgeon creates one during an 8-hour surgery that involves doing skin grafts. The skin for the graft is taken from the inner thigh about as close to the, um, most private areas as one can get. They choose this area because the color is so close to nipple color. You are then left with scars that look like burns on the inner thigh, and the nipple is realistic looking -- but my doc made my fake nipples permanently erect. That's not something I would have chosen had I realized what I was getting into. I also wasn't wild about having nipples that grew pubic hair, but that's what that patch of skin did prior to becoming a graft, and it kept up it's old job.

Once the implants are in, the body starts to fight it -- building a thick capsule around it to protect the body from the foreign body. That capsule, which I saw when I had my implants removed, is very much like the white gunk on a raw chicken, only much, much thicker. It's very fibrous and tough.

But the capsule is more than just ugly. It gets very hard, making the "breasts" like bricks. And that skin you worked so hard to stretch? It gets stretched even more as the capsule grows -- to the point where you feel like you have a tight band tied around your chest when you breathe. Very uncomfortable.

And when you have the implants removed, you end up with very skin that's tighter yet. They can't remove the nipples because there wouldn't be enough skin to close you up after they remove all they need to remove, no matter how much you hate the fake nipples. Oh, and there's this: when the capsule is removed (the only correct way to remove implants if you're sick from them because otherwise pieces of silicone can be left behind), you're not just flat ... you end up with concave areas in the chest, like you have inverted cereal bowls where the implants were. Lovely.

I had my removed impants sent to a pathologist for examination and, sure enough, piecs of the silicone envelope had sloughed off into the tissue and set up the inflammatory response. This was something that wasn't supposed to happen because the envelope was textured to prevent it from sticking to the capsule, but it was that protective texture that sloughed off into the tissue.

[never cry wolf]

41. OMG, I am so sorry for your experience

I am not sure where to begin. I lost my sis to breast cancer a couple of years ago. Hopefully your health problems remain in the cosmetic realm...