MovieChat Forums > Breast Men (1997) Discussion > Doctor Larson is Right.

Doctor Larson is Right.


Every character is the movie is swept up in the craze for bigger and better breasts, including Dr. Larson, but he sticks to his ethical guns. He won't make breasts bigger than what he sees as a naturally imposed limit. Dr. Saunders, on the other hand, will stop at nothing. As far as he's concerned, the soccer ball's the limit.

Larson is right in another important way too. Every act involves some kind of value judgment and is therefore, in a larger sense, political. The ups and downs of bosoms in this movie reflect a drive for power on the part of doctors, patients, political organizations like NOW, and the media.

When some of the patients begin to show up on talk shows like Phil Donahue and Oprah, weeping openly and claiming that their implants caused diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis -- diseases whose ultimate causes are unknown -- sympathetic viewers gush with sentiment and pity.

Yet the entire display on TV and the other news media is misleading. Larson's point is that the sampling procedures are wrong, which they are. "You find three women out of three million and put them on televison," remarks Larson bitterly. And he points out that the number of sick patients among the implant population is about the same as in the population without implants. In other words, the implants may or may not be ridiculous, but there's a complete absence of evidence that they're linked to any disease. None of that stops the juries from slipping the bone to Dow Corning and the surgeons using their product. The millions of dollars awarded as punitive damages is helped along by the prosecutor's display of the ugly stuff removed from altered breasts.

Larson isn't a perfect human being by any means, but he's quite right in abjuring the degrading advertisements that Saunders puts into the newspapers. Ads like that are not professional. They damage the confidence that patients have traditionally had for health care providers. And Larson is right in not creating breasts the size of medicine balls. And he's right about sampling procedures.

reply

What's the naturally imposed limit on tattoos? None? Piercings? Zero.

Body modification has been going on with humans for thousands of years and has nothing to do with "natural" limits.

Humans exhibit a multitude of sexual behaviors that are found among many species, however most species only have one or two characteristics whereas humans deploy them all. Looks are one aspect. Many females of various bird species respond to extravagant plumage of males. These birds have "naturally imposed limits" in that a male bird can only have so much plumage before it becomes too much work to maintain or to keep it mobile. However in experiments scientists have shown that given artificial plumage far beyond natural limits, the females will choose the males with longer and longer feathers, even if the length is so great the bird can no longer fly and can hardly move.

We don't have plumage, but people get tattoos, piercings, and surgery to achieve some manner of attractiveness. If the person wants and appreciates the surgery, what exactly is "wrong" about doing it?

Because it makes other women jelly?

reply

I guess I shouldn't have used the term "natural limits." I'm aware of the forms that body decorations can take and they vary a lot from one culture to another. Unlike peacocks, the limits of those decorations are socially determined, like dress codes. Breasts like some of those in the film aren't found in the world of humans but you have a point. There's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with them.

Larson and the other doc should have seen the push back coming, and Larson's observation about Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, and argument by example were accurate.

reply

The early implants were pretty primitive. A lot of different advances have been made since to make leaks less likely, but some of them still leak sometimes.

reply