There's no escaping the buggers. 52% of us have them, the remaining percentage are drawn to them like doe-eyed panting puppies are to Pedigree Chum. They're suckled, jiggled, pushed up, strapped down, enhanced, deflated, the subject of envy, lust, pride, embarrassment and manipulation.
The power of our puppies, ladies, is bordering on grotesque. In many ways, we should thank our lucky stars that this should be so. Goodness knows how Playboy twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon would have wooed any member of the human race were it not for the veritable beach ball store they're housing between them- not with their sparkling wit or razor sharp intelligence, that's for sure.
No, bless them, their God-given attributes needed a hand from the silicone fairy were they ever to make a, ahem, 'decent' living mutually servicing the needs of the world's primary contributor to the Viagra industry. Someone's got to do it.
Momentarily putting my inner bitch back in it's box, though, they are seriously important addendums. As a secondary sexual organ, an in-built supply of nutritious goodness for any sprogs that the self-same secondary sexual organs managed to initiate, and a symbol of femininity identifiable the world over, there is no doubt that boobs are, in fact, pretty bloody vital.
Momentarily emerging from the box, inner bitch would like to add that on the other hand, were it not for our pesky chest pillows, we wouldn't have Katie Price's tit-shelf on legs parading about media land like a Chihuahua on heat. Nor would we have Jodie Marsh making 'documentaries' for Channel 5 about the Earth shatteringly important subject of what-Jodie's-boobs-did-next. We'd save enough money for a small mortgage if we no longer had to buy heinously over-priced bits of wire enhanced boob-cloth, back pain in the well-endowed would be a thing of the past, and black-eyed chest-heavy joggers would be able to cavort wild and free like carefree spring lambs in the gym field. Ah, what a blissful breast utopia. If Aldous Huxley had been a woman, Brave New World would undoubtedly have run along these chest-lite lines.
Regrettably for my chest pancakes, however, we live in a world where bigger is better. If you were - in the words of Gaga, born that way - then like it or lump it, DNA has blessed/cursed you (delete as is your want... personally I think they're gratuitous flesh meddlers, but me and feminine identity don't get on very well at the best of times, so give all the love you want to your own, you pink-and-sparkle pervs). The natural heavyweights have got to live with the cards dealt to them, as do the jelly-tots-on-ironing-board quota of society, one and all. What I cannot understand, comprehend, fathom or even (most of the time) respect, is augmentation. Although some women undergo breast reconstruction for necessary and utterly understandable medical or emotional reasons, the grand majority of breast augmentation is to catapult the average, cuddly, natural rack into realms of Kardashian-esque inflation, and it is with these cases that I take serious issue.
Ladies, this insane trend must stop. I have maintained indifference to the ritual inflation of breasts the world over for many, many years - it's their bodies, it's their perceived confidence, their interpretation of elevated sexuality, let them eat silicone. But the PIP silicone-exploding scandal has been the straw that broke this camel's back.
In case you've been hiding in a cave in Outer Mongolia for the last month, the PIP implant is a French-made breast implant that has been made from industrial silicone, rather than medically approved silicone. The cheeky frogs have been manufacturing flesh-fillers made from material intended for mattresses, thus making the rupture rate far greater than its medically approved counterparts.
This means that around 40,000 women in the UK alone are wandering around with water bombs of infection bobbing about in their chests, with a greater potential to burst and leak mattress material into their stuffed-up bodies if prodded with enough gusto. If a breast implant ruptures and leaks, the silicone can spread to other parts of the body, such as the lungs and lymph nodes, and can be impossible to remove, making your wee bods, essentially, a sloshy, melted down walking mattress.
In some severe cases, the silicone can move through the rest of your actual breast tissue, and guess what? The breasts that you paid thousands of pounds to stuff full of industrial plastic now have to be completely removed in a painful, dangerous and ultimately devastatingly mastectomy.
While these women pump iron at the gym, eat their acai berries, tan, buff and moisturise, keeping their well-oiled machines ticking over with the utmost efficiency (which, lest we forget, requires a colossal amount of time, money and dedication), they are equally as willing to rip open their flesh, stuff in a wobbly hunk of man-made gunk, bandage themselves up and endure bruising, scars and potentially a whole host of mess ups (including gangrene if infected- gangrene! Pussy, smelly, flesh rotting gangrene!). Lest we forget, this is all in order to look like Barbie's discarded prototype- you know, the one that couldn't stand up because gravity deemed her upper body too relentlessly magnetic?
To my mind, the risk to result ratio makes about as much sense as Tom Cruise's enduring popularity: simply unfathomable.
The potential risks don't end there either: studies have shown increased risk of (brace yourselves) rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, esophogeal immotility (that's difficulty breathing and swallowing for the average Joe), neurological impairment, fibromyalgia, hair loss, scleroderma (that's tough skin for you and me - yummy!) and even lupus in women with implants.
Girls, let's get a grip here. Implants may get you attention from randy builders, they may fill out your body-con dress with a little more panache, they may give you nipples that practically point north... but really (and this comes from someone with a front that looks like the Dutch countryside), why not try implanting some self-love. I've heard it's pretty much free, has 0% chance of rupture, and there's absolutely, definitely no chance of gangrene.
This post was altered from an earlier published version.