“HEY BABE, NICE CANS…!” From Plastic to Fantastic and Back Again. I want to address the topic that is currently both literally and metaphorically, the closest thing to my heart- breast implants. Something which a number of women seem to garner a lot of criticism for… I personally have received criticism about having them- but none more so then from myself when I look in the mirror and wonder “what I was thinking?” or in fact when I catch myself loving the way they look in a bra and being utterly embarrassed at my own vanity.I’ve begun to think a lot about these themes recently amid the criticism I seem to have faced. This has led me to wonder why I got them in the first place and how I feel about them now…
Growing up, my parents had a successful art business which wholesaled prints to framing shops and they had a big factory with all the prints stowed away in shelves. After school, or when I was having a sick day, my mum would take me to work with her where I would spend all day going through the shelves constantly being exposed to art from all eras from so many great minds and visionaries. A lot of the art depicted the male and female forms.
[pagebreak]
I remember as a little girl, being most drawn to Milton Greene’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe as well as Helmut Newton’s photographs. I was intrigued by how these beautiful bare women could be so strong and yet so vulnerable simultaneously and how that perfectly represented what it meant to me (as a little girl) to be a woman- to be curvy and shapely with full breasts (as all women depicted in popular culture of that era). It was interesting to later learn that my great Aunt Wendy had modelled for Helmut Newton many times.
Aunt Wendy became a key figure in my identity as she had always felt a little different from the rest of my family, being labelled “the drama queen” and as the glamorous one in a family of strong but very practical women- women who had little time to worry about their appearance in a harsh Australian town amid the recession. My great Aunt Wendy eventually moved to Los Angeles. As I grew older and spent time with my great Aunt Wendy, I gradually defined my place as a woman within the family circle and beyond. On my last trip to LA before her passing, she was dressed head to toe in leopard print with a full face of makeup- despite the fact that she was dying of cancer…even her cane was sparkly and glittery. To the end she remained determined to protect her persona as an ideal ‘woman’. This affected me greatly.
[pagebreak]
I have always been fascinated by the iconic women in history- from Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield to Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson. It wasn’t only their incredible glamour and beauty to lead me to be so fascinated by them, but the way all these women were so desired, so scrutinized and so iconic in that parallel.
I often wonder why women like this receive so much animosity from other women simply because they use and emphasize the features that make them aesthetically pleasing in a modern world- such showing cleavage, painting their lips red and wearing high heels. It fascinates me that other women see this as a negative thing and can only lead me to ask the question – why is it still considered such a shameful thing to be female who flaunts her femininity? Is it from so many years of living in a man’s world that we still feel so inferior that it should be inappropriate to exhibit and enhance the very features that define us physically as women?
<img src='http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4060/4425054692_86c2b92527_o
