Hugo Chavez rails against ‘monstrous’ breasts
by Elizabeth HaggartyHugo Chavez has had enough of “monstrous” breasts.
In his latest televised address, the Venezuelan leader condemned his nations’ love with plastic surgery, adding that breast augmentations “did not square well with his revolutionary priorities.”
Chavez called it a “monstrous thing” to see women with little financial resources spending their savings on larger breasts and condemned doctors who “convince some women that if they don’t have some big bosoms, they should feel bad.”
Venezuela is home to the highest number of plastic surgeries in the world per capita with 40,000 women a year undergoing breast enlargements, according to the Venezuelan Society of Plastic Surgeons.
“It is painful to see girls or women that may not have sufficient resources for housing, to accommodate housing for the children, [to buy] clothes, who are looking to see how to do an operation on the breasts,” Chavez said in his speech.
Caracas is littered with billboards advertising bank loans to fund plastic surgery where breast implants cost thousands of dollars.
“I’ve never seen more silicone anywhere else,” Mireia Sallarès, a Spanish-feminist filmmaker working in Venezuela, told the newspaper Tal Cual.
Venezuela’s obsession with beauty contests (and fairytales of girls transformed from slum dweller to supermodels that surround them) has been blamed for the flood of the nation’s women undergoing the knife in search of physical perfection.
A six time winner of Miss Universe , Venezuela’s last crowned Miss, Stefanía Fernández in 2009, was handed the crown by a compatriot.
Vanessa Brito, a 27-year-old Caracas resident who had breast implants, explained to AFP that cosmetic surgery was becoming the norm for women of all social statuses.
“I think there’s a social pressure in Venezuela, a beauty ideal that can be seen in contests like the one for Miss Universe. And seeing that, everyone wants to look the same,” she said.
Miss Venezuela is the nation’s most watched TV program every year.
In 2007 Chavez railed against the rise in the number of teenage girls being given plastic surgery as gifts from their parents, on his weekly TV show.
“Now some people think, ‘My daughter’s turning 15, let’s give her breast enlargements.’ That’s horrible. It’s the ultimate degeneration,” he said.
While most Venezuelan media praised their president’s declaration, opposition newspaper El Nacional decried Chavez for showing an “antiquated, militaristic, coarse, repressive attitude” towards the freedom of women.
With information from Toronto Star
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