Breast Enhancement and the Message It Conveys

I was both outraged and saddened by “Breast Enhancement in Your Own Home” (July 2). In the same section, “Monitor” noted that “beauty and fashion magazines have been blamed for creating a culture in which girls hate their bodies,” yet the article about breast “enhancement” is part of that culture and makes the Los Angeles Times just as culpable as beauty magazines. The article was an uncritical infomercial for the Brava device, complete with testimonial and smiling photo from a client who works for a surgeon who sells the device.

It is the antithesis of health to promote unnecessary and expensive medical procedures for media-[and] culture-driven “beauty” reasons; in fact, it is a form of mutilation that, in societal function (control over women) is identical to the genital mutilations performed on women in some parts of Africa and the Middle East.

JANE M. ALSTOTT

Los Angeles