Western culture has a long obsession with policing women’s boobs. During the Renaissance, they were at the forefront of culture with Boltraffio’s “lactating madonna” and Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, in which his nude Aphrodite caused some pearl-clutching because of its depiction of taboo female nudity and sexual desire. Later, during European colonization, female nudity was weaponized to harm colonized women, where images of colonized women’s bare breasts perpetuated racist stereotypes, mythologizing the superiority of ‘modest’ white women.
Similarly, as Eliza Goodpasture argues, in the late 20th and 21st century, boobs served as a feminist motif for second-wave 1970s feminism, the 21st century #freethenip movement, debates surrounding public breastfeeding, and current attacks on transgender healthcare. Labeling some boobs good and others bad has become a cultural obsession and clothing that defies gender norms stokes the flames of conservative rage.
Just last year, bralessness defined Charli X’s Brat Era, exemplified by Glamour’s article describing how Charli’s “nipple-barring” dress was so Brat. This dress also incited criticisms at the Brit Awards which the star clapped back at, stating “I heard that ITV were complaining about my nipples. I feel that we’re in the era of ‘Free the Nipple’ though, right?”. Like Charli, countless female celebrities’ outfits—including Florence Pugh’s sheer pink Valentino look, Rihanna’s Adam Selman gown, and Megan Thee Stallion’s 2025 Vanity Fair Afterparty outfit—sparked outrage.
So you may be wondering how this leads back to discourse surrounding breast implants?
The Beauty Backslide & Breast Implants
Society’s fury at women’s breasts has become particularly potent when it comes to breast implants. Breast augmentation was one of the most popular surgeries in the early 2010s and the number one cosmetic surgery in 2022. Yet, Misogynistic attitudes towards recipients of breast implants have profound psychological consequences. Recipients of implants have been labelled conceited, selfish, and have been subject to harsh criticism, derogatory comments, and even sexual harassment post-surgery. Furthermore, women with larger chests have been stereotyped as hypersexualized and undereducated in media for millennia.
In 2025 as the far-right gains momentum, breast implants have been further stigmatized due to an emphasis on natural beauty, with countless TikToks of celebrities with little-to-no makeup using captions like “natural beauty always wins”. In cosmetic surgery, there is a rising preference for “natural” and “undetectable” procedures.
This desire for “naturalness” is situated in an overarching trend dubbed the “beauty backslide,” in which beauty and wellness trends shift away from supposedly “manipulative” body positivity. This includes a return to extreme thinness and harmful rhetoric alongside conservative aesthetics like the clean girl, trad wife, and quiet luxury trends which uphold strict gender binaries.
These trends also reinforce outdated and Eurocentric beauty standards, with the trad wife “retreat[ing] not only into the home, but also into history.” As Journalist Sherman points to, the trad wife romanticizes a 1950s past in which women had few rights; they had no right to birth control or a credit card and marital rape was not a crime. As Kettj Talon aptly summarizes, the “soft aesthetic, vintage dresses, perfectly styled hair, and glamorous makeup—displayed while roasting chicken or scrubbing floors—mask the authoritarianism and misogyny of the right…”
The conservative nostalgia for a fictional past of soft, ‘natural women’ cooking in the kitchen, and the stigma surrounding plastic surgery—particularly breast implants—have profound consequences, furthering medical misogyny in a multitude of ways. First, women not only face stigma for receiving implants but also their removal. Jacqui Palumbo’s CNN article about the rise of breast explant surgery draws attention to the rising removals, with the ISAPS reporting a sharp increase in breast implant removal between 2020-2024. Celebrities like SZA, Pamela Anderson, Ashley Tisdale, and more are opening up about their implant removal. Surgeons have reported various removal reasons, such as “capsular contracture, rupture and malposition to aging, changes in weight, changes in styles, and pregnancies” alongside others. The rise of semaglutide medications like Ozempic has also led to a rapid increase in breast lifts over implants because of structural changes to the breast itself resulting from weight loss. They are also advertised as more “natural,” with one clinic tying them to spring season with its slogan: “spring is the perfect time to perk up!”
Breast Implants, Explants, and Medical Misogyny
Overall, breast explant surgery is on the rise, revealing profound problems in the medical field. For example, bodybuilder and fitness model Katie Corio told CNN her removal was spurred by reflections on implants being normalized in her career path and current physical discomfort. Yet, when she had a consultation to remove them, Coro was shocked when her surgeon argued she should instead opt for smaller implants and showed her “extreme pictures of deflated, scarred and uneven breasts,” asking her partner during the consultation if he wanted her breasts to look like the photographs. She took to Instagram, stating: “it was literally like he was trying to scare me into not removing my implants.”
Corio is far from alone. Many women have reported struggling with implant removal, including the cost of the surgery, medical professionals overlooking or outright denying their experiences with Breast Implant Illness (BII), and difficulties getting the surgery from their original or preferred surgeon. BII has affected thousands of women, with one BII Facebook group alone hosting 50k members who report experiencing BII. According to Cleveland Clinic and Breastcancer.org, more than 100 symptoms have been associated with BII, such as breathing problems, sleep disturbance, memory problems and confusion, joint pain, chronic fatigue, headaches, anxiety, and depression.
Although BII is self-reported and documented by thousands of women, it has not been recognized as a formal medical diagnosis, although the FDA loosely acknowledged it as a “possibility”. As Dr. Martin Newman states, BII can be difficult to diagnose because the symptoms mimic other conditions, “including autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, and even menopause”. Some surgeons have even denied BII is real, dividing the medical community. Yet, as plastic surgeon and influencer, Dr. Anthony Youn highlights, there is also a definite “blind spot” within this field due to gender bias: “ How much do plastic surgeons know about the causes of brain fog in women? Well, not a lot.”
Many women have gone public with their experiences. For example, fitness instructor Naomi McArthur told BBC that her BII made her constantly feel like she “ran a marathon”, and that even writing with a pen was exhausting. On top of chronic fatigue, she experienced hair loss, allergies, and rashes. She said, “It’s been absolutely horrific, … the amount of pain and suffering I’ve had to go through, and going to hospitals and clinics and doctors and saying to them…, I’m so ill, and they’re just saying it’s not to do with the implants.” She ended up paying thousands to remove her implants and, following the removal, her condition rapidly improved. Like Naomi, Shontia Marshall also experienced BII, including nausea, rapid weight loss, and brain fog that left her struggling to care for her children and maintain her job. She kept visiting doctors but none could pinpoint the cause, even laughing at her concerns. Following her explant removal, her symptoms rapidly resolved.
Similarly, Lacey Marie’s Ted Talk, Why I Am Boobless After Breast Implant Illness, shares her BII experience of skin rashes, hair loss, chronic fatigue, headaches, food intolerances, insomnia, and joint pain. Her condition progressively worsened until she could not walk on her own for two years and reached a weight of 80 lbs/36.2874 kilos. Each doctor reassured her that her breast implants were not the culprit, leading her to try endless medications and receive a full hysterectomy. When a groundbreaking study hit the media about the link between breast implants and cancer alongside her discovery of a BII Facebook group, she was determined to undergo it. Yet, as a single mom who struggled to afford the explant surgery, she held off until she began feeling a pain in one of her breasts. She got mammograms, MRIs, and blood tests, resulting in two markers culminated with a family history of cancer which led her to remove her breasts. She discusses women’s experiences of losing their breasts alongside her own removal journey, in which full removal “seemed unacceptable” to her surgeon and the difficulty of securing a removal in a rural area.
These women’s experiences of their health being overlooked reveal profound global flaws within medical systems. All the CNN explant interviewees described frustrations, such as feeling unheard, persuaded against explant surgery, or mistrusting of their surgeons. A survey of nearly 900 plastic surgeons indicated male surgeons had a higher likelihood of upselling larger implants. As Dr. Youn summarizes: “for some plastic surgeons, there is a financial incentive to potentially dismiss it because they don’t want it to be real, because that cuts into their profits.” The desire to maximize profits was embodied by the 2012 Breast Implant Scandal, in which a French company made breast implants from “cheap industrial silicone” meant for mattresses which had a higher likelihood of rupture. One of the recipients described how she felt like she had a “ticking time bomb inside” of her. Similarly, affected women reported feeling shamed throughout the legal battle, as if they were at fault for having the augmentation to begin with.
Ultimately, while several prominent medical professionals warn against fear-mongering rooted in online misinformation and misogynistic attitudes towards plastic surgery, it is also critical to highlight how the women experiencing BII have been ignored. As plastic surgery becomes our new normal, undulating with the swinging pendulum of beauty trends, the medical misogyny women experience for their choices must be examined. Similarly, these voices must be heard and taken seriously by those in the medical field to protect women.