Source: Daily Mail (Web)
Date: Sunday 23, March 2008

Celebrity-obsessed Britain blamed
for huge increase in teenagers
having breast enlargements

The number of teenagers having surgery to enlarge their breasts has more than doubled in just one year.

Doctors say the surge is the result of Britain’s celebrity-obsessed culture, with young women copying growing numbers of famous people who have gone under the knife.

But experts warn that young people are putting themselves at mental and physical risk, because in many cases their bodies have not finished developing.

Figures from the country’s largest three cosmetic surgery chains show that almost 600 teenagers had their breasts enlarged last year.

One company has reported a five-fold increase on the year before. Transform has a chain of 22 clinics and offers surgery on credit with 0 per cent interest. Last year it performed 169 breast enlargements on 18 and 19 year olds - up from just 31 the year before.

Shami Choudhry, a spokeswoman for Transform, said credit deals made the procedure - costing up to 5,000 - more attractive to teenagers.

She said many were copying celebrities like Chantelle Houghton, 24, who won Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, who they have read about in magazines such as Heat and Closer.

Other celebrities, such as Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, are reported to have had breast surgery. ’Young women read in magazines about personalities, like Chantelle, who have had breast augmentations and have a great influence on teenagers,’ she said. ’Eighteen and
19-year-olds are big consumers of weekly celebrity chat titles. Every edition contains something about cosmetic surgery, and women who read these magazines often buy two or three of them a week.’ The Hospital Group, which has 14 clinics across Britain, has also seen a surge in demand. It carried out 203 breast enlargements on 18 and 19 year olds last year - more than twice as many as the year before.

And the Harley Medical Group, with 19 clinics, performed 180 operations, compared to 90 the year before.

Kafeh Mokbel, a consultant breast surgeon at St George’s and the Princess Grace hospitals, both in London, performed a breast augmentation operation on a 19-year-old just last week. He said: ’This young woman wanted the procedure to enhance her confidence about
her body image when going on beach holidays. Her parents funded the procedure.’ Most British cosmetic surgery clinics do not operate on women under the age of 18.

One company, SurgiCare, turns away women aged 18 and 19, and urges them to come back when they are 20. Mark Bury, chief executive of SurgiCare, said: ’In some cases these women have not finished developing. Even if they have, surgery may be
a knee-jerk reaction or a result of peer pressure.’ And Eileen Bradbury, a consultant psychologist who counsels patients considering surgery in Harley Street, said having surgery too young could affect a girl’s mental state. ’If you have surgery for the first time when you are 18, then you face a lot of surgery throughout your life to replace the implants, with the possibility of something going wrong every time,’ she said. Breast enlargement is the most popular form of cosmetic surgery for women in the UK, followed by eyelid surgery, face lifts and liposuction.

The fifth most common procedure is breast reduction.
Among men, growing numbers are having operations to reduce the size of their ’man boobs’ or ’moobs’. There was a 27 per cent rise last year, to 224 breast-reduction operations.

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