PIPS AND SQUADDIES

My take on the Pips story (faulty French breast implants used by cheapskate cosmetic surgeons) is about the same as my take on the stream of young men Serving Their Country in Afghanistan: pointless, wasteful, and vainglorious.
   As someone who had breast surgery as a first line defence against cancer, I just can't understand why anyone would choose to have their mammary appendages messed about with in the name of body enhancement - for pleasure,  be it their own or to please other people. The body isn't a piece of fashion: it is a natural gift, and we mess about with it at our peril. Why have breasts always been problematic for women: not big enough, not small enough (see 1920's), not round enough? They are only problematic when they're not functioning properly, as in failing to feed babies, or so heavy that they cause breathing problems, or when they  threaten survival, as with cancer. Any other 'problems' are just vanities; and it is vanity alone, not psychological disorders ('bad body image/low self-esteem') that prompts women to visit private clinics to have their boobs inflated. They pay to have the implants in, and it is only fair that that they should pay to have the implants out. The suggestion that the NHS take them out at the taxpayers' expense is scandalous and morally abhorrent, especially  in a time of austerity and cuts to the Service. For every Pip that gets taken out in an NHS hospital, another bona fide patient, awaiting breast reconstruction after mastectomy, say, is kept waiting.
  As for the young Squaddies, they choose to join the military; they aren't conscripts who have no say in the matter.  It seems like skewed thinking to me to propose building hostels where the relatives of injured career fighters can stay while their soldier is having his false limb fitted. Instead of hostels for the rellies, we need hospices for the chronically ill and bereft, who have no choice with regard to their condition in life.

   I had a go at the false boobs culture in an early post on this blog when the revolting Jordan (aka Katie Price) was at the top of her game. I can't remember which post it is, but there was something gruesome in it about false fillets exploding in crematoriums (sorry). We are all headed in the same direction, towards the inevitable ending, and if we can't get that, and inwardly digest it, our lives are not worth living.

image by Agnes Toth 
http://www.agnestoth.eu