Melissa Vickers wrote a wonderfully eloquent post about being a zealot. I wanted to comment on one thing she said: >And how about the breast implants? The anger there is directed where it should >be, not at the folks who brought up the concerns in the first place. I don't really think the anger has yet been directed at the ultimate source, which is a society that tells women that their worth depends on their physical attractiveness, which in turn depends in part on the size of their breasts. If parents in Dallas/Fort Worth give their daughters breast augmentation surgery as high school graduation presents, and those implants end up causing problems -- should the girl be angry at Dow Corning or at her parents/society in general? I read somewhere recently that a doctor was saying the evidence is still not conclusive whether breast implants cause health problems and that he wouldn't know how to advise his own mother if she "needed" implants. I wanted to jump up and down and scream NOBODY EVER EVER EVER NEEDS IMPLANTS!!!!!! People may want them, and women who've had mastectomies may want implants instead of a prosthesis, but nobody needs them for medical (physical health) reasons. EVER! And if some people have been so affected by our cultural beliefs that they suffer mental anguish because they have small breasts or because of a mastectomy, then they need help and support and counselling. Women need to get angry about a world that judges them solely or primarily on their physical appearance. End of rant. Sorry folks . . . . Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. e-mail to [log in to unmask] Associate Professor of Anthropology Texas A&M University Specialist in infant feeding and growth