Fuck Doctors, the View needs a fucking feminist consultant

Jezebel features a post about Amanda Gershony, a 16-year-old girl who got a breast reduction and liposuction when she was just 15. The video's at the link; I don't know how to embed ABC's videos.

This made me really upset. Her mom explains that Amanda was being teased at school, and told by teachers to cover up more, as if she was being inappropriate merely by having big breasts. So she got a breast reduction, even though she admits that she didn't have any physical symptoms associated with her oversized breasts, like, say, back problems.

While they were at it, she got liposuction too. Her mom explained that Amanda had a "pocket of fat" above the belly button that "wouldn't go away." She also feared that her daughter would get an eating disorder, because she kept eating "less and less" to try and make the "pocket of fat" go away, and that it was never going to, because apparently everyone in the family has that same fat pattern. Horror of horrors.

Amanda is cute. She's a pretty, thin teen who probably weighs, what, 120? 130? She's small. And she has gone through these two surgeries now, which the plastic surgeon they had on the show (compromised interests, much?) said was no big thing. Maybe it isn't, physically. But what about the psychological consequences?

I have some experience in this matter. I started developing breasts in elementary school and by seventh grade was a filled-out C. By senior year, I was wearing DDD and now I'm like an H. And yeah, parts of it sucked. It sucked when someone wrote "[M. LeBlanc] is a slut" on the wall of the girls' bathroom, when I hadn't so much as made out with a boy. It sucked in 8th grade, when boys who were asked to lead the warm-up in drama class would have us do jumping jacks and sit there and watch my tits bounce. It sucked when high school seniors asked me to sit on their laps when I would cross over to the high school side of the campus for my advanced French class. It sucked when I went to horseback riding camp for a week when I was 16 and the instructor pulled me aside to tell me about how my breasts were bouncing a lot and she was worried it was causing me problems. But it sucked even more when that same instructor called my godmother, who I was staying with that summer, and they had a conversation about my tits and my godmother took it upon herself to talk to plastic surgeons about the feasibility of getting breast reduction.

I didn't want a breast reduction. I wanted everyone to stop paying so much fucking attention to my tits. And luckily I was sound of mind enough to not believe other people's implications that there was something wrong with me that I needed to have surgically altered, and told such people that it was none of their business. I said that I would decide what to do about my apparently TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE tits when I got older.

And you know what? I don't give a shit now. I like them. If I start to have back problems, maybe I'll think about it. If I end up with breast cancer, which there's a decent chance I will, I may just go for the double mastectomy instead of a lumpectomy (that is, if I have a choice).

Because the fact that my tits are grounds for everyone and their mother to have a conversation about my breasts is other people's problem. Not my problem. Just the other day a client made a comment about the size of my breasts and I wordlessly glared at her so hard she came back the next day to apologize.

And that's what the mother in this clip missed. If she wanted to help her daughter, she should have gone and told the teachers that what they were doing was inappropriate. She should have talked to the school principal or encouraged her daughter to take those fuckers out. Not paid for her to have surgery on her body because other people found they way she looked to just be too goddamn provocative for a learning environment.

I hate to judge other people's choices. I really do. But I can't help thinking that in this case the mother was thinking "I had to go through that, and I don't want my daughter to.." so, she just went for the extreme choice.

And that's not even getting to the liposuction. The mother and daughter (and the hosts of The View, by their silence on the matter) seemed to agree that there was definitely something wrong with not having an absolutely flat stomach, and that since Amanda couldn't change it by exercising obsessively, she should have surgery. What about just saying "hey, it's cool, even though I'm thin doesn't mean I have to look like an airbrushed model." What about being positive about your body? What about waiting to see how you feel in a couple years? I used to think my nose was hideous when I was fourteen; now, I really can not figure out what I thought was wrong with it. I used to hate my thighs--now I could give a crap about any one part of my body. I still struggle with the whole "being fat" thing, but I don't have particular ire directed toward any part of my anatomy.

I'm sad that there was just no chance on this show of having those issues addressed. The doctor said it's okay, Joy took a "surgery is bad!" approach, and everyone else just sat there with concerned eyes.

I should start marketing myself out as a feminist consultant on current events. In a just world, there would be riches and fame in that.