...I pay so little attention to the culture of "lads" mags that it would have been quite possible for this one to pass me by. Luckily the Guardian have taken the time to discuss the Zoo Magazine "Win your girlfriend a £4,000 boob job" competition.
I've never been a big fan of magazines which present themselves as being somehow cultural or mainstream and are in practice just pornography. How weird though to imagine that anybody's girlfriend would be thrilled to have their fella come home bragging "I've won you a boob job". Here are six little-known facts about boob jobs, specially compiled for you by the top staff at Cru-blog (that's me):
1) Some women have big boobs naturally and don't want a boob job.
2) Some women with smaller boobs prefer their slim, sporty image and don't want a boob job.
3) Some women don't fancy the idea of invasive surgery and a lengthy recovery process, pain and bruising, and don't want a boob job.
4) Having a boob job significantly reduces the sensitivity of the breasts and hence sexual pleasure, for this reason some women don't want a boob job.
5) Having a boob job usually means a woman will subsequently be unable to breast feed any children they may have. For this reason some women don't want a boob job.
6) Sometimes surgery goes wrong. Aside from the results not living up to expectations, having a boob job can be fatal. for this reason some women don't want a boob job.
If your girlfriend wants a boob job I suggest talking to her about why she feels that way and the dangers associated with surgery. It's probably a self-esteem issue. Probably related to the fact that you're a rubbish boyfriend...
If your boyfriend wants to win you a £4,000 boob job, just dump him, he's an idiot.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
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14 comments:
Despite your list of 'little known facts' many women choose to have boob jobs. We musn't restrict a woman's right to choose should we? Or are you anti-'choice' on this one? Why not wait until the competition is over, the prize awarded and the surgery performed. Contact the girl and see what she thinks. She might be pleased with the results. They might show the results in the magazine, before and after photos etc. Make sure you don't miss a copy.
To my mind the implication of offering such a thing as a prize is that all women want it. That's my point. If I wasn't a lot smarter I'd think that you deliberately misunderstand everything I write because you get some sort of cheap thrill from it.
Thrill is putting it too strongly. I enjoy replying to your postings, and I always do try to be polite. It is cheap to reply to you though, as I get free broadband access at home from my employer.
I simply think you are wrong in suggesting that the implication in offering such a prize is that all women want it. Where is the evidence to support this idea? The magazine is obviously aware that some women would accept the prize or it would be a pointless competition to run. Nobody would enter and the magazine wouldn't gain the publicity or increased readership that competitions are usually organised for. Some women do have such operations at their own expense, and this competiton offers one woman the chance to have it done at the magazine's expense. What is wrong with that? In fact, I've even heard of someone having such an operation on the NHS, and the NHS is wonderful as we all know. I do get the feeling that you wouldn't mind banning these operations altogether, in your usual leftie authoritarian way. Are you advocating a system whereby a woman has a right to choose what to do with her body only as long as her actions are approved by some 'correct' thinking authority?
err, no, thanks for asking though. clearly the suggestion "win a boob job for your girlfriend" implies that "your girlfriend" will want a boob job. its not even "win a boob job for yourself". it also carries the nasty inferrence that a woman's body can be redesigned at will by her boyfriend. surely even you can see that is noxious?
i don't advocate any restrictions on who can and can't have elective surgery but i think surgery - which can be fatal - shouldn't be treated as casually as this. i would advocate counselling for anyone who strongly feels that they want surgery.
If you have a boyfriend who wants to win you a £4000 boob job, you're probably not reading this blog.
Ah wufnik, if you have a boyfriend who wants to win you a £4000 boob job, then there is really a lot i don't know about you!
'it also carries the nasty inferrence that a woman's body can be redesigned at will by her boyfriend.'
No it doesn't. That isn't the prize. I don't imagine the surgeon, the magazine's editor and other medical staff will drag the woman kicking and screaming to the operating table just because her boyfriend won the competiton.
If the boyfriend wins the competition, and the girlfriend doesn't want the operation, do the rules allow him to carry the prize over to another girl at a later date? Let me know, it'll save me buying a copy.
As you obviously buy more magazines than me, let me know if you see a woman's mag offering male cosmetic surgery, liposuction in particular, as a prize. Mrs Simon thinks my body could do with alteration but I'm too weak-willed to go on diet.
Of course it carries that inference. Otherwise why doesn't it invite the girlfriends of the magazines readers to enter the competition themselves and win surgery for themselves?
Anyway my point is that surgery, which - did I mention - can be FATAL, should not be treated so lightly as to be offered as a prize in a magazine.
May I, a male, add point seven?
The thought of asking someone else to undergo needless surgery for benefit of my apparently shaky sexuality is so disgusting, I don't think that I could even get the words out. Many men do prefer their companions unaltered and in a reasonably natural state after all.
But then, I don't read the magazine in question either.
handdrummer
Hello. I don't read the magazine myself either but I know people who sometimes buy it. It's certainly a mainstream read. It's the sort of thing that's available in most newsagents (I went round four this morning looking for a copy of Private Eye and noticed it was in all four, though none carried Private Eye).
It does not logically follow that because the competiton is offered in a mans magazine, not a womens one, that the competiton implies that men have the right to decide what to do with their girlfreinds body. You are of course free to say it does. As for deaths during surgery, I am sure the recipient of the prize can make her own mind up about the risk before surgery. There is no need for you or anyone else to protect her from the consequences of her decison to undergo the surgery. I, unlike you, assume that the woman whose boyfriend has won the prize has a mind of her own.
And Handdrummer, what is disgusting to you might not be disgusting to someone else. That's life, that's diversity. Let's celebrate the differences between people.
it's not just in a men's magazine - it's under the heading "win a boob job FOR your girlfriend", the inferrence that this is about a man controlling what his girlfriend looks like couldn't be plainer if it coshed you over the head with a lump of lead piping. If you don't find that inferrence disgusting, I don't know what is!
The woman has to agree to surgery, so she is deciding what to look like. She makes the decision. The competition merely gives her the option to have a free operation or not, an option that did not exist before. You seem to have a very sad and low opinion of other women, portraying them as infinitely suggestible, malleable and unable to make a decision without help or interference from a man. Why don't you go to a clinic where these operations are carried out and talk to some of these women? Tell them you don't think they are making up their own minds about the operations. I bet you'd get some less than polite responses.
Of course women can make up their own minds, but they need fair and balanced information in order to do so. You can't make a decision effectively when this isn't available.
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