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THE FREE PRESS STYLE COfVirVIENT MAY 13, 2001
 Women’s self-esteem is so low, Sarah deLeeuw says, they take dangerous prescriptions to fit into the image created for them.
 Dieting, drugs and death
  I almost don’t want to wade into the fray of it. On the other hand, I can barley contain myself — after all it isn’t every day I can walk down a city street and see a marquee on a downtown building proudly proclaiming a ‘win free boobs’ contest. The trouble is that by writing this column I am giving attention to an issue thriving in part on the publicity it is getting.
     There is another issue that is also getting much in the way of publicity, and in an indirect way it is linked to our local ‘win free boobs’ contest. It has just come to the attention of newsmakers and breakers that since 1995 women in North America have been consuming a prescription diet drug that doctors now know can be fatal. Many women have already died from the side effects linked with the prescription, and more women continue to come forward with disastrous health indicators every day.
     There is talk of a class action suit against the pharmaceutical company responsible for the drug. The underlying concern is that many women will not live long enough to benefit from any compensation that might be awarded.
   Sarah
 deLeeuw
     So the question is, of course, why would so many North American women take drugs to loose weight? Granted they had no indication the prescriptions would be a death knell, but the drug was prescribed with the caveat of ‘possible side effects’ that included heart difficulties, shortness of breath, sight disruption and blood clots. Women took the drug knowing this, but weight loss took precedent over the health side effects.
     From my experience, women’s weight loss issues usually centre on body image, not health. In this way, weight loss drugs and their potential health risks are similar to breast implants.
     For years, women have known about the potentially fatal risks associated with breast implants. Yet we continue to undergo the operation, knowing that having silicon fitted into our chests may lead to the eventual removal of the entire breast, knowing the implant may lead to scars which run from one side of our chest to the other.
     Breast implants are not sexy things: they begin with the surgical removal of the nipple, or a deep slice from one edge of the bottom of the
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  breast to the other. The tissue inside the breast is pulped in an unceremonious procedure of cutting and shredding. Into the newly created cavity, often through the hole where the nipple once was, a silicon bag is inserted. The insertion slice is then stitched up, and a woman can leave with hard, high silicon breasts.
     I have heard the glib answers to these observations — women are just not smart creatures... that’s why we undergo these potentially fatal procedures and take potentially fatal prescriptions. These same women are our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters and girlfriends. What an obser-
  vation to make about us.
     From my perspective there is something deeply tragic afoot, both internationally and apparently just down the street at a local bar. It involves the fact that women’s self esteem is so bruised we consensually take fatal prescriptions to loose weight, and many will enter a local contest to win free boobs.
     It is pause for thought...on a week that begins with Mother’s Day, perhaps each and every one of us should take a moment to assure the women around us that their breasts are terrific just the way they are, that a few extra pounds has nothing to do with the reasons we love them.
 Victoria «Prince George ‘Langley
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