According to a Reuters article, “President Hugo Chavez railed against a new trend in beauty-conscious Venezuela, giving girls breast implants for their 15th birthday.”
It seems Chavez disagrees with this practice, calling it “the ultimate degeneration,” and supporting “Western-imposed consumerist icons such as Barbie dolls.”
1. I do not support socialist doctrine. At all. From what I read on the news sites, the people seem to like Chavez. I don’t care.
2. I am rather fond of breasts (on women, go ahead, call me an objectifying, misogynist pig, whatever…) but I have no inherent preference for larger or surgically augmented breasts. Nothing against them either, I consider it a personal choice of the woman (or, in some rare but conceivable case, man) who wants to have her body altered.
I have to agree with Chavez. I don’t think it’s appropriate to be giving 15 year old girls breast implants. While I hesitate to use the phrase “too young” it seems the appropriate one. I don’t know how Venzualan law compares, but, in the US, at 15 a minor cannot enter into contractual arrangements. I think putting them into a situation resulting in permanent and artificial alteration of the body (and not on the small scale of ear piercing) for reasons of pure vanity is exposing a particularly shallow view of women in society.
Eh, the typing is getting terrible and I have little more to say. I don’t like this idea. Now, if these “presents” were given at 18, 21, 35 or 80, I wouldn’t feel as much apprehension about the act, but at least let these girls get to know their bodies as adult bodies before changing them.