Made In Texas: Fake Boobs Turn Fifty
by E.R. Bills / March 10th, 2011
If I tell you I want to talk about fake boobs that came from the state of
Texas, you’re probably going to assume I’m referring to George W. Bush or
Rick Perry. They’re arguably the biggest pair of fake boobs we’ve seen
around here in a long time, but they’re not the fake boobs I’m talking
about. I’m talking about the “trophy” wife variety. I’m talking about a
major “cougar” accessory. I’m talking about the 50th anniversary of the
Lone Star invention that changed American topography for good (or bad,
depending on how you look at it).
The first breast augmentation processes popped up (pardon the pun) in the
late 19th century. In 1889, Austrian physician Robert Gersuny tried
paraffin injections. In 1895, German physician Vincenz Czerny placed
tissue from a benign growth on a patient’s back in a breast where he had
removed a tumor to “avoid asymmetry.”
In the first half of the 20th century, the race for the perfect fake
boobs heated up. Well-apportioned actresses like Lana Turner and Ava
Gardner were lighting up the big screen and gracing the covers of all the
big-name magazines. Women and their husbands wanted topographical
equality and doctors were eager to lend their talents and pad their bank
accounts. By the late 40s, physicians were augmenting breasts with glass
balls, ground rubber, ivory, ox cartilage, Terylene wool, gutta-percha,
Dicora, polyethylene chips, polyvinyl alcohol-formaldehyde polymer
sponge, polymer sponge in a polyethylene sac, polyether foam sponge,
polyethylene strips wound into a ball, teflon-silicone, polyester rubber,
etc.
In 1950, New York doctor Jacques Maliniac tried a “flap-based”
augmentation and rotated a woman’s chest wall tissue into her breast to
increase volume. In the 1950s and early 1960s, approximately 50,000 women
received silicone injections, but they led to dangerous granulomas and
painful breast hardening.
In 1961, the first silicone breast implants were developed by Dr. Thomas
Cronin and Dr. Frank Gerow, two plastic surgeons from Houston. They were
made of a tear drop shaped rubber sac and filled with a thick, viscous
silicone gel. They caught on in Hollywood first, because the price tag
for the prosthetics was cost prohibitive. But, eventually, prices came
down and they migrated back home.
Today, in most affluent areas in Texas, you can hardly stand in line at
the supermarket or go watch your kids’ basketball games without being
confronted by trophy topography, and it’s a little bit sad.
What happened to dancing with the ones that brung ya? Are the real things
just not good enough for us anymore? And wasn’t there a revolution in the
1970s that involved women railing against sexual
objectification?
Is there any greater embrace of sexual objectification than fake
boobs?
In the end I guess my own gender is most to blame. Gratuitous breast
images sell us material goods and anchor the marketing campaigns for some
of our favorite entertainment mediums. Even as adults, middle-aged dads
and graying solitary or married men, we still lead with or can be led by
our loins. And the bearings of our existential compasses are too often
affected by women’s breasts, real or fake.
Men are obviously pathetic for placing a premium on such things, and
women are silly for caring so much about male premiums. Perhaps it’s
simply our nature but, if so, it’s probably time for a little
transcendence. Topographical transcendence.
It’s often said that everything is bigger in Texas and, 50 years ago, two
Houston doctors developed prosthetics to make sure such was the case. But
their invention was a mockery of the Lone Star quality of authenticity.
And I’ll take authenticity over artificiality any day.
When you get right down to it, fake boobs are about as attractive as
toupees. And I don’t know how folks are turned on by the former any more
than the latter.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/fake-boobs-turn-fifty/
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