recent developments

My mom teaches at a high school about an hour and a half away from here.

Guess what the latest craze is, at least at her school?

Boobs for prom.

Apparently a lot of the high school girls are getting breast augmentations done now. They're planning ahead, sort of...and scheduling the appointments before April, because they want to have their new & improved breasts ready for Prom Night.

In the wealthier families, the parents are paying for this bit of elective surgery. Since some of the families can't afford to buy breasts, the boyfriends of some girls have graciously volunteered to foot the bill.

I can't decide who is the victim in that scenario - the girl, who's perhaps being pressured to have surgery just so he can have more than the requisite handful to hold? Or the boy, who's spending three thousand dollars on a relationship that might have a chance of lasting a week or two beyond prom night?

I can't help but feel sad. When did breasts completely lose all function and become merely a cosmetic accessory, like a handbag or a scarf? I don't want to get all La Leche League here, but breasts are functional. In most parts of the world, they're used for feeding children.

My mom let one student use the phone to call her mom, and the student began yelling and hung up the phone. My mom said, "Well, that conversation didn't seem to go well," and the student launched into a tirade about how unreasonable her mom was being over not letting her have breast surgery until she turns 18.

The funny thing was that my mom said that the girl was very well-endowed, enough so that my mom's first assumption was that she wanted a breast reduction.

The mother wanted her daughter to wait three months before the augmentation, and had even agreed to pay half of the purchase price at that time. But the daughter hung up on her mother. Her final words to my mother were, "I'm getting my breasts bigger and I'm having it done before prom."

Am I the only one who thinks this is completely insane?

I wonder, how does one raise a child who doesn't equate something as drastic as cosmetic surgery as a prom prerequisite? (Haven't these girls ever heard of the Wonderbra?) How do I ensure that neither my son or daughter ever puts quite this much emphasis upon appearances?

I don't know if I can. I hope I can. I plan to try.

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