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Her Image of His Ideal, in a Faulty Mirror
WOMEN contemplating breast enlargement surgery in the hope of becoming more alluring may want to think again: a new study suggests that women greatly overestimate society's tastes in breast size.
"Women's beliefs regarding men's preferences are wrong," said Dr. J. Kevin Thompson, the author of the new study. "And this incorrect belief may be a reason why women opt for breast implants: trying to achieve a cultural ideal they believe others have."
In the study, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, researchers showed 130 men and women from 17 to 25 years old a continuum of female figures differing only in the size of their breasts. The people were then asked which figure they preferred and which ideal they thought the average man and woman would chose.
While both men and women believed that their peers preferred very large breasts, they indicated that their own ideal was a good deal smaller, but still somewhat larger than the actual average.
So although there is "some truth to the notion that people want to be larger, what we believe society sets as its ideal in breast size is way out of line with the reality," said Dr. Thompson, an associate professor of psychology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Implants May Be Reconsidered
Dr. Don LaRossa, a plastic surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania said the new finding might lead some women to reconsider implants. "The notion that men like big breasts is so ingrained in women in our society," he said. "And if a large breast size was perceived of as less desirable or less important, there would be less motivation to change it."
Plastic surgeons frequently try to understand their patients' motivations and are reluctant to treat women seeking implants to please a husband or men in general, Dr. LaRossa said. "We like to see patients who are internally driven, who say 'I've always felt too small.' " But he added, "It's sometimes hard to separate the two, since where do those inner drives come from but the value we place on what everyone else thinks?"
Dr. April Fallon, a psychologist at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, said: "Women may say, 'I want this for me, not my husband.' But what is it their choice represents? Ideal body image is a social image. You're not only making a judgment about what you like but also about what other people think is appropriate or important."
Men and women are generally poor at divining what the opposite sex finds attractive, Dr. Fallon said. Her own studies have found that women think men like them thinner than the men actually do. So the average women seems to believe that the average man wants her ever thinner and ever bigger busted.
"It's an impossible situation, Dr. Thompson said. "Barbie is an impossible ideal." Misperceptions Among Men
In an era when an increasing number of men are seeking pectoral implants to shore up scrawny torsos, Dr. Thompson and his colleague Stacey Tantleff also examined beliefs about ideal chest size. They discovered that men assumed that women longed for a larger chest size than women -- or men -- actually favored, although the true ideal was still somewhat larger than average.
But the gap in perception is considerably smaller than that for breast size, and men are less likely than women to have an invasive implant procedure to make up for the perceived shortcoming. According to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, there were fewer than 200 pectoral implants in 1990, but men may shore up their chests by enriching health clubs where they pump iron.
While 150,000 American women have breast implants each year, more than 80 percent for purely cosmetic reasons, psychologists are just beginning to probe the motivations for this surgery.
Dr. Thompson said he hoped that the results of the current study might "make women happier with their current size and deter them from something radical such as having an implant." The results should also serve as emotional balm to the thousands of women who have never considered surgery but have lived life feeling underendowed, a discontent with body image that studies have shown is a source of depression and eating disorders.
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I found this article from the New York Times, when researching women's views of themselves. The site is labeled:http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E0CEFDE163AF931A15754C0A964958260
In the article, Dr. Thompson states that "Barbie is an impossible ideal." Here is a photo from the internet that I found very interesting.
We don't really see barbies like this........EVER!
But these? Yup. Seen 'em.
Just from looking at these 'perfect' female Barbie figures, they don't seem real in an way. Infact, these 'ideal' bodies give me the opposite intended reaction. Instead of hoping that I looked like this, I am turned off by its artificialness, and think of it as absolutely ridiculous.
This breaks open a number of topics to discuss through art.
In my first "Quickie" I'd like to create a wearable that is (through the eyes of society) suppose to be an 'ideal' altering of the body. However, when I create it, I will make this 'perfection' unattractive so that it will transform into something 'unideal'.
These are pictures of the first Quickie. Its structure is made out of papet, decorated with in-side-out pop can lining, prompted with staples, and fastened with duct tape. It is made to emphasis the breasts while also looking ridiculous. I think it is important for this piece to show that surgical body alterations are not as attractive as women believe them to be.
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