My Reason For Exclusively Photographing Natural Breasts For The Queendom Series
by Melanie Sievernich
“Breast augmentation continues to be the top cosmetic surgical procedure […]. Silicone implants were used in 85%, and saline implants in 15%, of all breast augmentations in 2019.” American Society of Plastic Surgeons
Having small breasts never bothered me. And yet, I was always certain that I would one day have surgery on them should they be empty from breast feeding or hang with age. Instead of using implants, I would have opted for my own body’s extra bit of fat, but it’s the same, isn’t it? How come I have changed my mind? Why do I only photograph natural bodies for my photo series Queendom—The Return to Innocence?
In early 2020, when photographing Helen—one of my Queens and a mother in her 30’s—something in me shifted. Capturing her natural body has healed a wound in me that society has ripped wide open in us women. By seeing life through my camera’s lens, my perspective has changed. I am no longer purely a woman but have suddenly become the spectator of my own gender; taking it ALL in. And I realize that I am falling head over heels in love with our natural bodies and their spectacular beauty.
I begin to wonder how we ever ended up here. How, why and when did we fall out of love with ourselves and our nature, buying into the idea that we aren’t beautiful enough the very way we are? Who made us believe that a body had to look a certain way to be appreciated? It surely wasn’t love.
So I began my quest and looked a little deeper into the history of breast augmentation and our obsession with large, round breasts. I wanted to know who had implanted this absurd ideal of beauty not only in one of our most beautiful and most feminine body parts, but also deep in our minds. An ideal born not out of a fact but out of a fantasy. A fantasy that tortures millions of women and ruins an equal amount of young boys that will eventually grow into conditioned, judgmental men.
How the Breast Implant was Invented
The first breast surgery was a reconstruction surgery, performed at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1895 by the Austrian-German surgeon Vincenz Czerny. After the patient, an opera singer, had a tumor in her left breast removed, she was worried that her breasts would afterwards vary in size, so a fatty tumor from the patient’s lower back was transferred to her breast.
This was, in fact, quite sophisticated for its time and in comparison to what followed during the early 20th century, when surgeons tried to mimic Czerny by implanting glass balls, ivory, rubber, ox cartilage, wool and polyethylene.
Silicon was first used for breast enlargements in Japan—after WWII in 1945—where it was tried out on prostitutes to better please the occupying U.S. forces who were known to favor women with large breasts. At the time, they experimented with injecting industrial silicon directly into the female breast, which caused harmful side effects. Beforehand, one had already experimented with goat milk and paraffin.
It was in the early 1960’s, when American surgeon Frank Gerow held a bag filled with blood in one of his palms, joking that it felt just like a woman’s breast. Right then and there, the idea of the silicon implant struck him.
The first guinea pig was a dog named Esmeralda. The silicon implant was inserted under her skin and removed again after a few weeks, as the dog began chewing out the stitches. The experiment was deemed a success.
The first woman to test silicon implants was Timmie Jean Lindsey, a mother-of-six. The two hour surgery that made history took place at Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston, Texas, in the spring of 1962. It had never been Lindsey’s intention to undergo breast augmentation and yet she agreed to volunteer for this first-of-it’s-kind operation, as Gerow and his colleague, Thomas Cronin, promised to get her ears pinned back in return; a surgical procedure Lindsey was craving for but couldn’t afford. Originally, she had shown up at the hospital to get a tattoo removed.
In 1976, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated silicon implants, subjecting them to controls and performance standards.
In the 1990’s, the FDA temporarily banned silicon implants due to possible links to an immune response disease, but silicon implants made their return as studies found no basis for this concern. However, the industry paid large compensations.
In 2010, silicon implants by the French company PIP were banned in several countries due to a higher than normal rupture rate. The scandal reached its peak, when France recommended routine removal of all PIP implants.
Today, silicon implants are still favoured over saline implants, despite an increasing awareness of their health risks.
Conclusion
To cut the story short, today’s breast implants are an invention of the 1960’s, a time when plastic and anything artificial was in fashion and on the rise. Nowadays, we are facing the opposite as we grow aware of how damaging it is for ourselves and our planet. We have finally realized, that the further we remove ourselves from our own nature and Mother Earth, the unhealthier we live and the sicker we get.
Breasts, by nature, are intended to nurture a women’s newborn child. The breast is our first intimate contact with our mother, which does not only cater to our nutritional needs but also strengthens us emotionally. Throughout time, understandably, there has been a fascination with the female breast. This fascination, however, has misled to turning one of our unarguably most feminine and sensual body parts into a sex symbol that comes with strict guidelines attached to it in terms of shape and size.
I know that my thoughts on this subject and my decision to only photograph natural bodies for my photo series, Queendom—The Return to Innocence, will upset some women. This is not my intention. My decision springs from my personal journey with Queendom—how it transforms me and my perception of our bodies. I am so curious to see, if it is possible to take this implanted vision of the perfectly sculpted body out of our minds and replace it with the greatest beauty there is: our God given nature. I sincerely hope so.
Melanie Sievernich is the creator of Queendom—The Return to Innocence, a photo series on a mission to free beauty of manufactured ideals and to give women their nature back.
