Big Breasts are Big Business: Why are we risking our lives for a bigger cup size?

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The recent health scare related to 'PIP' breast implants has reignited the debate about cosmetic surgery, and I'm very glad of it.  It was becoming too accepted, too normal.  Time to wake up and realise that it's not normal.  It's not an everyday thing to consent to have someone cut open your body, place a sack of chemicals in it and sew it up again.  Neither is it normal to inject your forehead with poisonous snake venom, or cut a hole in your thigh so that your cells can be sucked out. 

I feel sorry, of course, for those women who have been misled in terms of the safety of these procedures, and am disgusted by the callous business that has grown up around cosmetic surgery, a business prepared to risk lives for profit it seems.  I am particularly sorry for those women who, following the trauma of cancer and mastectomy, are faced with a second blow in discovering that their reconstructive surgery may have put them at further risk.

Unfortunately, this industry (as any other) is driven by demand, and that demand is being stimulated  constantly by the way in which physical 'perfection' is presented to us by the media.  Now, you can tell me that it is a psychological problem for some people, and that they will only feel better if they have the op - but I have to disagree that this is the best course of action.  It is doing what (in my experience) we as a society have become so fond of doing - treating symptoms not causes.  We provide medical care for smoking-related illnesses instead of tackling the causes; we wait for obesity to create medical problems before working on the root causes of it, we allow people to reach the point of hospitalisation before any offer of treatment for mental health problems is given.

Psychological problems and mental illnesses are not visible on the body unless we make them so, and it is often the case.  Physical signs of mental illness - self harm, dysmorphia, eating disorders, suicide attempts are manifestations of real, serious mental illnesses  - but instead of treating the causes, our society persists in treating the symptoms.  We trivialise these symptoms as a 'cry for help' and perpetuate the view of mental illness as a weakness.  If I had a broken leg it would be OK to express sympathy, if I had depression it would not.  We dismiss what we do not understand and what we cannot see, and what a loss to society it is that we cannot accept and treat mental health problems as real and address the root causes, one of which is, I believe, a society that places unrealistic expectations on its young people.

This isn't just the government's responsibility, or the responsibility of the NHS/mental health professionals, it is everyone's responsibility.  Educators, parents, partners, the media, businesses, designers - everyone needs to take collective responsibility for ensuring that we do not create another generation of young people so disconnected from what the human body looks like that they feel compelled to bridge the gap between what they see in the mirror and what they see in magazines.  We have created a generation of young people who are prepared to undertake risky, costly, time-consuming procedures in the pursuit of an idealised image of perfection that does not, and cannot, exist except with the aid of Photoshop.  What a sorry state of affairs it is when the minds, bodies and creative energies of our youth are being poured into this pursuit of the unattainable.  What a terrible, terrible waste.