Japan: Teen girls, moms team up in boob job bonanza

By Ryann Connell
March 3, 2005

Though wiser heads are tittering, Japan's schoolgirls are going through a breast enhancement boom, according to Shukan Shincho.

Women's magazines typically devoured by teens are now packed with ads promising quick and easy ways to get a bountiful bust.

So big is the boob job business, cosmetic surgeons have now joined make-up companies and fashion houses as the bosom buddies supplying the advertising revenue keeping women's publications afloat.

"Ever since the simple cosmetic surgery procedures became popular a few years ago, there's this image that's arisen that has made people lose their inhibitions about going under the knife to make themselves look better," Mika Iorui, a journalist specializing in schoolgirl issues, tells Shukan Shincho. "There are an increasing number of girls who're going in with their mothers to have breast enhancement operations together so they can both get over their worries about having small breasts and lead happier lives."

Tokyo-based cosmetic surgeon Mitsuyoshi Fukuda confirms the increasing number of schoolgirls and their mothers asking about breast enhancement ops, saying they're the biggest concern he faces.

"Girls in their teens are beset by a variety of emotions. Many of them develop a complex about their busts. They become negative about just about everything, and many drop out of school, or even society altogether," he says. "Many mothers suggest breast enhancement to their daughters and they come here together. It seems the biggest worry the girls have is the common baths they take with classmates while on school trips."

Fukuda says he tries to convince most of the girls who come to him with worries about the size of their busts not to go through with breast enhancement procedures, but he only succeeds about 90 percent of the time.

Another plastic surgeon, Yoshihiro Kitamura, blames moms for inspiring their daughters to yearn for giant jugs.

"We get girls coming to us for breast enhancements all the way from Hokkaido or Kyushu. Girls of 17 or 18 have more bountiful breasts and hips than women older than them, yet they tend to over-emphasize when they compare themselves to others. Girls are generally built like their own mothers were. I suppose that makes some mothers feel a bit guilty when their daughters are bothered by the size of their boobs," Kitamura tells Shukan Shincho. "Lots of mothers will squirrel money away without telling their husbands, then come in here for a boob job with their girls."

Breast enhancement operations are comparatively simple. Fat is suctioned off other parts of the body and injected into the breasts. The operation is conducted under local anesthetic and finished within two hours. Costs vary, ranging from anywhere near 300,000 yen into the millions of yen.

Costs are prohibitive enough to prevent the breast enhancement boom from getting even bigger than it already is, as ordinary schoolgirls will attest.

"I'm interested in a boob job, but the price is a bit steep. I'd go for my eyes first," a 17-year-old schoolgirl says. "I use glue to give myself a double eyelid every morning, but as soon as I wash my face, it disappears. My boyfriend catches me out all the time."

Some are disgusted by the trend. Critics say that teenage girls looking at artificial means to enhance their busts are making a booby.

"There is still no perfectly safe breast enhancement operation," Kitaro Omori, head of the Japan Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, tells Shukan Shincho. "Even silicon bags, which are said to be comparatively safe, can still leak, rot and bring about the need for a total mastectomy. In the long term, fat injected into the breasts will harden into lumps. Mammograms pick these up and make it extremely difficult to differentiate between them and the actual lumps caused by breast cancer. Sometimes the injected fat has to be taken out of the breast and examine to see if it's safe."

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