All I Want for Christmas

As the song goes, it used to be ‘my two front teeth’ but my how things have changed! It seems in Italy that teenage girls over the last few years have increasingly wanted and obtained a gift voucher for breast implants under their Christmas trees. Today, over 5% of operations involving plastic surgery in Italy are performed on teenage girls under 18 years old. But, the government has decided to put a stop to it because of health risks involved in surgery when the mammary gland isn’t, as yet, fully developed.

The Italian Council of Ministers has approved a Bill setting up a Register of Breast Implants and it has outlawed breast implants for girls under 18 years old unless there are valid medical reasons. The Minister for Youth, Giorgia Meloni said that this ban was necessary  ‘to put a brake on the danger represented by the influence of the wrong aesthetic models on those who, very often, are not yet able to make a properly pondered choice’.

Not surprising, many teenage girls (and boys for that matter) feel unsatisfied with their bodies and suffer low self esteem because of it. This is just one of the many painful aspects of growing up. Being bombarded every day with images of pencil thin but procacious actors, models and celebrities on TV, in movies or in magazines doesn’t help but research has shown that a teenager’s idea of body image improves with maturity with or without the intervention of the surgeon’s knife.

Less  known is that breast augmentation can  cause difficulties after surgery and  the American FDA has estimated that 40% of patients have at least one serious complication within three years after getting saline implants. Furthermore, if the teenager changes her mind later and wants to have the implants removed, in all probability her breasts will look saggy and wrinkled, creating yet another problem.

This year, however, in Italian teenagers’ homes, Santa has no alternative other than to use his  good sense……