Italy Takes a Brave Step

Sono spiacente, bambinas, but if you are a woman in Italy younger than 18, you are no longer allowed to get breast implants.

If anybody needed concrete evidence that Berlusconi's power has waned, this is it, folks.

The details, according to The Telegraph:

[Italian Undersecretary Francesca Martini] said: "This legislation is primarily aimed at the growing number of girls under 18 who have breast enhancement surgery purely for fashion reasons and have no idea of the risks involved.

"Far too many adolescent girls are unaware of the fact that there are risks with this type of surgery and it should not be used purely for fashion and looks. At the moment we have a Wild West, cowboy style system of plastic surgery for young women and this must stop."

So, wait. They are not aware of the risks involved and they do it for fashion? I had trouble understanding you since you repeated everything twice; maybe that's why you're still an undersecretary, Frankie?

Anyway, the Undersecretary for Redundancy made it very clear that this "Wild West, cowboy-style" system has gotten out of hand and is out of control. So...exactly what kind of numbers are we talking about here?

According to statistics from the Italian Society of Plastic Surgeons there are around 85,000 breast enhancement operations a year in Italy, of which 70 per cent are for aesthetic reasons and 30 per cent follow cancer treatment.

Okay...but how many teenagers, since that's the point here? Well, it turns out the Telegraph did not feel like that was an important detail, but according to Huffington Post, "approximately 10,000 teenage girls worldwide had the surgery performed in 2008."

Too many? Certainly.

"Cowboy?" No.

Unless 99% of them occurred in Italy, which I find difficult to believe considering the current level of Stateside shenanigans...

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