Boobies(Kate O'Reilley) “Boobies”
By

Kate O’Reilley


As a woman in the twenty-first century, where plastic is no longer limited to food and beverage containers, I am compelled to comment on the explosion (pardon the pun) of fake breasts in this country. In my role as an anesthesiologist, I’ve seen countless breast augmentation mammoplasties, or BAMs.

By the way, the acronym has always struck me as comical. You go in for surgery and, a few hours later, “BAM!” you’ve got yourself a rack. Anyway, I apologize for the digression. I’ll get back on track.

First of all, I think very few women and, probably even fewer men, know what really happens in the operating room during a BAM. First of all, once the patient’s off to sleep, the entire OR staff checks out the patient’s pre-BAM tits. There’s no way we cannot look. Not only do they comprise the surgical field, but also morbid curiosity is part of human nature.

Then, depending on the surgical approach, an incision is made either at the bottom part of the nipple or underneath the breast. The plastic surgeon will try to keep the incision as small as possible, in order to minimize scarring. Next, the surgeon dissects through the tissue planes of the breast. In layman’s terms, this means digging out a pocket within the breast to make room for the implant.

Now it’s time to bring on the sizers. The surgeon takes sterile, disposable replicas of the implant and shoves them in the breasts. We then sit the woman upright and most, if not all, of the operating room staff heads down to the foot of the bed to take a gander. Constructive critiques of the art project at hand abound. “The left is higher than the right.” “They are too far apart.” “They need to be bigger.” After each round of comments, the patient is laid back down, the surgeon makes the necessary adjustments, and we sit her back up for another look-see. It’s the surgical equivalent of a dress fitting.

The repositioning, resizing, and restructuring goes on for countless cycles. In fact, it doesn’t end until one of two things happens. Ideally, everyone in the room is truly satisfied that this is indeed the most beautiful pair of breasts they have ever seen, and nothing can improve on their utter perfection. Less ideally, and more realistically, we’ve been looking at the patient’s chest watermelons for numerous hours and our stomachs are starting to grumble, our bladders are starting to distend, and we’ll say anything to make the case end. Personally, when I get to that point, I don’t care if one’s pointing north and the other’s headed due east. As far as I’m concerned, they look fantastic.

The last part of the procedure is the insertion of the actual implant. Imagine taking an oversized water balloon and trying to shove it into the mouth of a beer bottle, and you’ll have a pretty accurate mental picture of what happens at this stage. The surgeon pushes, squeezes and shoves until, finally, the tail end of the implant disappears into the tiny hole in the patient’s breast. Then they suture the incision and BAM, new boobs!

Then I, as the anesthesiologist, wake the patient up. As she emerges from her sleep, we all reassure her how “absolutely fabulous” her breasts look. It’s at this point that the patient smiles dreamily as she fantasizes of all the fun things she can do with her new toys.

Which brings me to my next point. When did it happen that real breasts became unattractive and undesirable? Take me, for example. And please, don’t worry. I’m not going to show you a picture of my breasts, so there is no need to turn away. But the truth is I’m forty-four years old, I’ve had a child, and I breast fed my daughter. What am I left with? My once cute, perky little B cups that looked great braless and in a tank top now droop to the floor. If I bend over at my waist, they drop from my chest like two small, underinflated water balloons swaying in the breeze. Who would have known that little breasts could sag so much? But you know what, they are my little boobies, and they look appropriate for my age.

Contrast my set with what I’m forced to be compared to at the beach or the pool. Countless women have tits that remind me of a television reporter’s hair. They are in perfect position and nothing can make them move out of place. Their breasts are perfectly round, full, and standing at attention. Apparently that’s the new look.

What perplexes me the most is why women would want something that looks so artificial. I’ll admit, I’ve got a trained eye and I can spot a fake pair from across the room. But I don’t think my exposure in my profession makes me uniquely gifted. Most people can pick them out of a crowd. They are always just too plump, too firm, and too widely spaced apart. And for those of you who have never touched them, they don’t feel anything like the real deal either. They are firm, almost like bags of sand.

As for what men think, I did some admittedly unscientific on-line and personal research. While there are always going to be men on either side, the majority of the male commenters said they didn’t like fake boobs. Most guys prefer breasts that bounce and sway, and feel soft and squishy.

And then there’s the question of what’s going to happen to these women down the road? Twenty or more years from now, these women are going to end up as someone’s grandmother with wrinkles, sunspots, and saggy skin. They’ll go to the hairdresser once a week for their styling, start wearing polyester pants with elastic waistbands, and going to bed at 7:30. But, by God, their boobs will stand up straighter than they can. Fake boobs and old ladies are like wearing pink and red. It’s entirely unnatural, and it just doesn’t match.

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