Have you ever seen those photos in National Geographic magazine of tribal women with stacks of large metal rings around their necks to stretch out their necks? Or those huge hoops inside their earlobes that stretch their earlobes down to their shoulders? To us that seems fairly radical, right? Not something we'd see everyday on the streets of a Canadian city.

Women have, for a long, long time, been doing things to their bodies for the sake of "beauty". Victorian women used to pass out at parties because their corsets were too tight. (No matter why they're unconscious, I don't find passed out women all that attractive. I guess "My friends said I had a good time last night" is nothing new.) High heels cause foot damage. Cosmetics are made out of... well, someone will get hurt if I tell you what cosmetics are made out of.

Still, women continue to submit themselves to these tortures. I don't know what the consequences of refusal are in tribal cultures, but I do know several local women who refuse these "beauty" treatments and are not condemned for it.

These days, it's a decision to be made by each individual woman. That's fine with me. But there's one relatively recent development in this saga of mutilation that really offends me. I draw the line at breast enlargement. I have heard many arguments made in favour of fake breasts made by women (the arguments, that is, not the fake breasts) and none of them sway me.

Why fake breasts? What really gets me angry is that some women literally think that they're inadequate because their breasts are small. What has breast size got to do with anything? Do you really want a job that you couldn't get because your breasts weren't big enough? Do you want a man who gives you a chance and talks to you because he noticed your breasts? (He's only saying hello to your breasts and telling your breasts he'll give them a call. And your breasts are now deceiving the poor oaf.) Do you want anything that would become available to you only after you filled your chest with foreign matter? I don't want a woman who does.

Women have trouble believing that I don't like this brand of "enhancement". They say half the time I don't know that they're fake when I walk by, or that I'm just saying that to impress them. Well, I'm not. Fakes do not look good. They look fake, and they look stupid. Even the good ones look like weird disproportioned lumps tacked onto an already anorexic frame. They don't sit right, either. They're just unnatural. Yuck. Small, natural, secure women are much more beautiful than big, fake, insecure women.

Chances are genetics blessed you with a bust that is too small. Too small compared to what? Women in magazines? Those women are merely airbrushed photos on magazine racks (pardon the pun). If the magazine racks disappeared, so would those photos and the "pressure" to look a certain way. These photos have no tangible bearing on real life. In the '20s small was the ideal. Today too small means not-causing-spinal-damage. Hey, I too wish I was born with a bigger body, so I could beat the crap out of the guys who make women ashamed of their bodies. But I wasn't, and you don't see me doing steroids to impress women who are too dumb to appreciate my personality.

Don't get me wrong. I like a naturally voluptuous figure. But not as much as I like bright eyes and smiles. Anyway, women are made to focus too much on their bodies. This is too big, that is too small, blah blah blah. I wish women could just ignore all of the vague "forces" that convince them always to focus on bogus ideas of outer "beauty" and just relax and have some fun. Invest their energies in something more fulfilling. Like laughing. Now that's beautiful.