Bad medicine
By Karl Miller
I accidentally caught the last segment of Good Medicine, on Channel Nine at 8.30pm Wednesday night. It was one of those times you are so horrified you can't stop watching. Those 10 minutes were a segment on breast implants.
From the little I have seen of it, this show is paid to produce bits of advertising for sections of the health industry. This segment was essentially an advertisement for breast implants.
It had such things as wall charts showing how to choose the right size and shape implant for your height and build. It had "before and after" interviews, shots of the surgery, women telling us how much better they felt now they had implants.
The last few years have brought increasing attacks on the rights of women. The mass media have increasingly used images of women's bodies as commodities. It has been several years since I heard of a graffiti campaign against images like the Kayser "Perfects" underwear ads.
Mass consciousness opposing the idea that women should look a certain way has certainly lessened, if this show is any guide.
It is not a good sign for the women's movement that this segment could be produced with only the barest mention of side effects. It spent nearly a whole minute pointing out that research in the area over the last five years had made silicon implants a lot safer, especially if you use the "new style" gels.
Of course, the program had no conception at all of the beauty myth. Was it really so long ago that Elle McFeast took the mickey out of breast implants?
Perhaps the worst part of the segment came when they were interviewing someone who had recently replaced her "old style" breast implants with "new style" ones. "They look, and feel, more natural", she tells us, smiling happily, echoed by the voice-over in the next shot of her walking the beach. Breast implants to make your breasts more natural? Urggh.
Ideologically, this show was just one more prop for the idea that women are property, sexual commodities to be, literally, shaped and moulded to fit the stereotypes of current fashion.
Active opposition needs to be shown to these ideas. Anyone for a graffiti run?