The Case of the Missing Areolae: Race and Breast Reduction Surgery — Page 6:
26 Apples tend not to have large dark circles around their point of attachment to the tree unless they’re diseased or rotting.
27 This early preference by white males regarding the desired appearance of white female breasts may be so deeply rooted as to be embedded in the choices that surgeons currently make when crafting new breasts during breast reduction surgery. For example, in an article describing what’s purported to be an improved technique in breast reduction surgery, the clear objective is to achieve “nipple projection,” with no rationale given for why this is a desirable outcome (Casas et al 955-60). A “boxy” breast mound and “deficient breast projection” are put forth as outcomes to be avoided, as the goal is “conical breast shape” and “anatomic projection.”
28 Why is it that, as female breasts increasingly came under the control of men, ideal female breasts must be for pleasure, look like apples (first small, later large), and be high on the chest, of adolescent placement and form, simultaneously with being too large to be adolescent? The standard for perfection is contrary to nature, unrealistic, and impossible to achieve, without repeated surgical, and thus male intervention, since most surgeons are still male. Even with the increasing presence of female surgeons, white males control the text.
29 Using the metaphor of “text” troubles me in writing about a topic so intimately personal to females. Leonard Shlain posits that “the demise of the Goddess, the plunge in women’s status, and the advent of harsh patriarchy and misogyny occurred around the time that people were learning to read and write” (viii). With patriarchal mores so internalized, I struggle to find a less masculinist metaphor.
30 If Diana Jones accepts that women tend to view their own body, in terms of their breasts, through the lens of men's perceptions, it would appear that she accepts as uncontroverted fact that women are disempowered when it comes to their breasts. If this is the reality of women’s relationships with their breasts, then issues of power and disempowerment lie at the core of the history of how women's breasts are perceived, touched, manipulated, and thus affect decisions about reduction. As Kathy Davis puts it, “[t]he body remains [...] a text upon which culture writes its meanings” (50).