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Self-Esteem
–7 year old girl
At what age do young girls become aware of their appearance and its effect on those around them? Is there pressure to be beautiful? Thinner? Have bigger breasts? How does their definition of “beauty” affect their self-esteem?
In ABSOLUTELY SAFE we meet a group of 7 year old girls who state quite clearly that they feel pressure to be pretty. As they flip through magazines, laughing and giggling at photographs of all sorts of women, they quickly criticize appearance and judge beauty with sharp tongues. “She’s ugly!” “She’s pretty!” “Her breasts were this big!” For these seven year old girls, beauty is measured by the models in the magazines. In just a few minutes with these girls, it is clear that the judgement of beauty and breast size begins long before breasts grow.
For decades, manufacturers of breast implants have promoted the idea that breast implants will improve a woman’s self-esteem. Advertisements for breast implants have tapped into the notion—or fact?—that buying bigger breasts is way to feel better and be happier. Recently one breast implant manufacturer has also promoted that breast implants also make you look more intelligent, using the tag line –“You’ve never looked smarter.” Having bigger breasts now seems to be the way to look beautiful and smarter. Is this true?
Deneé, one of the main characters in the film, is insecure about her appearance because she has smaller sized breasts than she would like. For years, she longed to look more like the images of women she saw in magazines and television. After getting implants, she not only feels better in her clothes and has more confidence, but she also “feels more like a woman.” To Deneé and so many other women, feeling like a woman seems to be linked to looking more like an ideal beauty represented in the media.
The women in the film each have their individual reasons for getting breast implants. Another character in the film, Dr. Joy Taylor, says, “I got them to save a bad marriage and it didn’t work anyway.” While waiting to see renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Franklin Rose a patient says she got implants as she grew older because her breast started to “hang” and she wanted more cleavage and height. As a younger woman, Wendi decided to get implants because she knew having bigger breasts would help her earn more money as a dancer.
For the women in the film who have lost a breast, getting implants was presented as part of the treatment course for breast cancer, rather than a choice. Anne Stansell says, “The doctor says you have breast cancer. You need a mastectomy, you need radiation, you need breast implants. It’s like part of the whole treatment.”
Audrey chose implants after her mastectomy because doctors told her that implants would last a lifetime and that she’d never have to wear a bra again. After her implants, she was angry when men looked at her at the beach. Ironically, when asked why she said, “this is not really me. So don’t look at me.”
Self-esteem is subjective and is built on so many feelings and ideas. While every woman has a different sense of self and identity, it seems increasingly clear that most women in our culture are affected by images and definitions of ideal beauty. Breast augmentation surgery is now one the most popular cosmetic elective surgeries in the world. In 2006 in the United States, breast implant surgery was the most popular cosmetic surgery, surpassing liposuction. Clearly, the popularity of breast implant surgery is an indication that larger breasts make women feel more confident about their appearance.
ABSOLUTELY SAFE raises questions about “feeling good” and “looking good” in the context of risk and choice. Is “looking good” more important than the risk of not “feeling good?” Do breast implants increase a woman’s self esteem?