Buying Our Bodies

A review of the documentary Absolutely Safe and a look at America’s purchase of female beauty

By Colleen Curry (November 14, 2008)

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Denee Dimiceli grew up watching performers like Jessica Simpson on MTV. Blonde, skinny, and big-breasted, they were the ones getting all of the attention, all of the praise. They became role models, icons planted in her mind that signified ideal femininity. Dimiceli didn’t just grow up wanting to look like them, but wanting to be them. But there was a problem: she was only an A-cup. And small breasts certainly weren’t seen on MTV as the ultimate in female sexuality. There was only one solution: breast implants.

In Carol Ciancutti-Leyva’s documentary Absolutely Safe, Dimiceli and others recount their experiences with breast implants, including their reasons for getting them and the physical and emotional aftermath of their surgeries. It is an honest look at all facets of the cosmetic surgery industry, one apparently wracked by safety questions and accusations of profiteering.

Denee Dimiceli’s story seems common to most of us, and yet is one of the most complex of the film. Happy in her relationship with a husband who doesn’t want her to get the implants, Denee insists on the surgery in order to feel more fully like a woman. She saves an enormous sum of money throughout her twenties (her prime dating and mating years) and, finally, is able to purchase the implants shortly before age thirty.

It seems almost counterintuitive; if you’re not getting them to seem more attractive to men, then why?

In Dimiceli’s case, it’s so she can feel more like a “real” woman. She explains that bigger breasts will help her feel more feminine, an idea echoed by nearly all of the women in the film, and certainly not limited to young ones.

Older women—mostly breast cancer survivors—feature prominently in the documentary as women who opted for breast implants at an older age. After double mastectomies, the women often feared feeling asexual or unfeminine; in many cases, their teams of doctors encouraged or pressured them to get implants immediately to avoid the emotional trauma of losing their breasts.

The documentary raises serious questions about the society that encourages surgery in order for its members to feel better about themselves. These women—from Dimiceli to the cancer survivors—were no less physically female with A-Cups or mastectomies. And yet something, or someone, told them that they were inadequate; that their small-chestedness made their sexuality (and them) questionable or negligible.

Is there something innately wrong with the idea of breast enhancement? And if so, who is to blame?

The filmmaker suggests one possible culprit: the industry itself. Following doctors as they consult women on standards of beauty and suggest various cosmetic surgeries, it is clear that pressure to conform to a standard of beauty can come even from a Hippocratic-oath-taking doctor. But why? Would a doctor really suggest unsafe implants or surgeries just to, well, make money?

The movie also focuses on government hearings about the safety of silicone implants, and whether they should be more strictly tested and regulated. As of now, there has been little testing on the lifespan of silicone implants and the damage they can do upon rupturing. Still, the government does not demand third party studies nor does it see the need to regulate their use; are industry and government ties to blame?

But the women in the film aren’t looking for someone to blame. Now, years after their surgeries, almost all of the women have faced physical and emotional problems from ruptured implants. Speaking in terms of pain and poison, the women grieve their former bodies and regret listening to their mostly male doctors.

In the end, the documentary is an unflinching portrait of American women wanting bigger breasts in order to qualify as women. And as it directs our attention once more to an unhealthy and unsafe ideal of female beauty in our country, it is at both thought-provoking and horrifying. Will just being female ever be enough to qualify us as women?