Zoo Weekly - Sharing the Love…
In the last week or so, there’s been a fair amount of news coverage on the Zoo Weekly Boob Job Competition. For those who haven’t heard about it, the mens magazine Zoo Weekly has recently offered a new competition to their readers - send in pictures of your girlfriend’s cleavage, and whoever is voted the most ‘deserving’ wins $10,000 for a breast enhancement.
Apart from this being downright illegal (the NSW government is apparently holding an inquiry, to which Zoo says that the money could be spent on any cosmetic surgery procedure - still illegal), the fact that this competition is running at all shows so much about the state of feminism in Australia, and how very, very far we’ve still got to go.
The most bizarre and disturbing thing about this competition is that it is based on the idea that women would not only love to get a boob job from their boyfriends, but have had their cleavage photographed, sent into a mens magazine, and ‘judged’ by a gaggle of men. If I ever had a boyfriend so oblivious to my right to privacy, let alone inform me my body needs cosmetic surgery, I would have to - at the very, very least - give him a good slap across the face. If men have the right to comment on our bodies so easily and publicly, does this mean we can send snapshots of their penises into Cleo or Cosmopolitan in hope that we’ll win them a penis enlargement? How many men would thank their partners for that, I wonder?
It also completely forgets the very basic idea that any cosmetic enhancement procedure is still surgery - it’s dangerous. The breast implants can leak, they don’t last forever, they need to be replaced (and, if you really want, upgraded). There have been deaths due to the fluid inside the implant leaking into the lungs or the chest tissue. Not to mention, things can go wrong while in surgery. You could have complications under anaesthesia, or the surgery could be done improperly. I’m sure many of us have seen the before and after photos of breast implants that have deflated or rejected the body. How can this kind of procedure be… winnable? Why is a risky surgery being shown as a ‘great gift for both parties’?
What do you think? Would you accept this gift from your partner?
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