Mommy, what ripe, full breasts you have

I suppose I shouldn’t be completely surprised by this.

If you’re a Beverly Hills mommy who wants to maintain a youthful appearance well past the age at which it is appropriate, how to you explain to your children why you sometimes go away, come back with bandages on, have to say “please don’t snap my healing girdle”, or “Mommy can’t hold you for a while, her chest is a bit tender?” Well, now there’s a book that can tell you how to handle all of these potentially awkward queries, and give your kids valid information with which to discuss your procedures on the playground. Instead of them telling their friends “she got bigger, but smaller… she doesn’t look like my Mommy!” They can say “Her skin was stretched causing it to pucker and while she was at the doctor, they just shaved off that unsightly bump.”

I’m reminded of the book Beauty Junkies by Alex Kuczynski (which I highly recommend), where the author chronicles (with delightful honesty and humility) her own experiences with plastic surgery. Initially limiting her experiences to assorted injections, the author eventually decides to go under the knife and have liposuction. Post-surgery she is feeling fit, lean, and fabulous in her bikini when a little boy approaches her and says something to the affect of “You had fat sucked out of your legs with a vacuum.” She denies this vehemently, after all, what’s the point of having work done if people, even ten-year-olds, know you have.

“No,” the boy insists, “You have those dimples in the side of your leg just like my mommy, and she says they’re from having fat sucked out with a vacuum.”

So there is one mom out there who didn’t need this manual to get through it. Unlike the mother in the article who says that she and her son have read it half a dozen times. Is the kid requesting this? It doesn’t seem like a particularly compelling read to me, but I’m no 4 to 7-year-old.

Also, the doctor who wrote the book, Michael Salzhaur, got the idea after many mommies came into his office with their children who were often frightened and confused. Really? you can afford plastic surgery, but you can’t afford a babysitter for three hours? “Parents generally tend to go into this denial thing. They just try to ignore the kids’ questions completely.” But, he adds, children “fill in the blanks in their imagination” and then feel worse when they see “mommy with bandages,” he says. “With the tummy tucks, [the mothers] can’t lift anything. They’re in bed. The kids have questions.”

The text doesn’t mention the breast augmentation, but the illustrations intentionally show Mom’s breasts to be fuller and higher. “I tried to skirt that issue in the text itself,” says Salzhauer. “The tummy lends itself to an easy explanation to the children: extra skin and can’t fit into your clothes. The breasts might be a stretch for a six-year-old.”

The book doesn’t explain exactly why the mother is redoing her nose post-pregnancy. Nonetheless, Mom reassures her little girl that the new nose won’t just look “different, my dear—prettier!”