A Real Bodice-Ripper

First week of No Cones. I’m floundering on Twitter, surprised every morning when I Google news citing “breasts”, and have already been called a hypocrite by a neighbour because I wear a push-up bra. Sigh….so far to go…

This week Disney made an unprecedented casting call for their latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” installment – no implants allowed! The explanation is that audiences have become more discerning and implants are too obvious to be believable in an 18th century setting. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that there must be another reason behind this (after all, surgically-altered actresses seemed fine for the first three movies; Kiera Knightley aside who is gloriously and unabashedly natural). Publicity is probably the answer…and it’s working.

Whatever the reason, I applaud Disney and Rob Marshall this decision. To have a motion picture powerhouse use a wildly popular franchise starring one of the sexiest men alive say “no cones” sends a huge message to all the young actresses and wanna-be’s out there – you don’t have to go under a knife to make it. In fact, it might hinder you. In fact, those DD’s might weigh you down (literally) as a porny typecast, unsuitable for period films, and paying off those surgery bills. And as we sadly know, what the young celebrity set does if often emulated by other women. However in this case it’s a good thing.

What has been unsettling is reading some of the commentary on the story. One writer at the University of Alberta’s newspaper called it “discriminatory” and that Disney shouldn’t exclude women who’ve had “harmless enhancement”. Since when is going under potentially life-threatening anesthesia to put a product inside your body that could cause all kinds of pain and disfigurement, not to mention destroy one’s ability to feed her children “harmless”? The terms “surgically-enhanced” or simply “enhanced” are frequently used in these stories to describe women who’ve had implants, and I’ve got a REAL problem with referring to this unnecessary procedure as an enhancement. Then of course there are the yokels asking how they can become casting agents for the film, a reference to Disney’s assertion they will test to ensure extras indeed are 100% natural.

Then again I should also want to applaud these yokels…as they are a group of men VERY excited at the prospect of surveying hundreds of natural breasts. A bodice-ripper indeed!