Mammary Mutilation Worldwide

Over the last decade, media coverage has focused attention on the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), in which women undergo painful cutting procedures on their genitalia and permanent alter their anatomy. Women in areas of the developing world undergo the disfiguring process because their culture emphasizes that the natural female body is "ugly" or "dirty" and must be surgically fixed. It is also widely believed that mutilated genitalia will give their husbands more pleasure during sex.

Many people in the so-called "developed world" find the practice of FGM repugnant, but few note that a similarly sickening practice is common in our own society. Female Mammary Mutilation (FMM) is widespread among women in the Western world, where cultural preconceptions of female beauty emphasize unrealistically sized and shaped breasts. Breast cutting is epidemic among popular female performers and celebrities, leading young women to believe that surgical alteration is necessary to achieve their dreams. Male-centered pornography commonly depicts women with breasts like fleshy bowling balls stuck to an anorexic torso with superglue. After repeated exposure to these images, young men no longer realize that these grotesque parodies of natural breasts are not normal. Instead, they associate surgical alteration with eroticism, and go on to encourage breast cutting in their wives and lovers.

It is notable that the practice of FMM is endemic to the "developed" world. This is undoubtedly linked to these nations' distinct (and sometimes destructive) cultural constructs.

For example, many social scientists note that in poorer nations, a fleshy body is considered beautiful, whereas wealthy nations typically idealize skinniness. Likewise, our culture's fascination with grossly enlarged breasts can be linked to the decline in fertility levels that is almost universal among "developed" nations. In countries where women have many children, breasts are seldom eroticized so much as considered useful in the nourishment of offspring. In the Western world, where women typically bear fewer children, the breast has been fetishized, made into something exclusively sexy. Ironically, the decline of fertility (and thus of the usefulness of the breast) has paralleled a growth in the expectation of "normal" breast size. As the United States population growth rate falls below "replacement" levels, idealized breast size has swelled to proportions that women cannot achieve without surgical alteration.

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