There are all kinds of theories about love – love should be unconditional, a lover should accept you as you are, and true love lasts forever. Nice ideas, all of them, but love, or what passes for it, rarely seems to work that way.

Take my friend Maria – she’s beautiful, intelligent, kind, generous, funny and sexually voracious, all qualities her now ex-boyfriend admired, but that didn’t stop him calling her a “jelly baby” after she picked up a few pounds.
Then there’s Greg. God may know why Sorcha dated him, because it’s a mystery to the rest of us. She didn’t like his hair or his clothes or most of his friends, but mostly she didn’t appreciate the fact that instead of chiselled abs, Greg was working a look best described as a slight paunch. She went to the gym three times a week, and didn’t understand, she said, why he wouldn’t do the same.
Finally there was the guy who texted into Red FM’s Victor Barry to ask me how he could persuade his girlfriend to get a boob job. She had many wonderful qualities and he loved her, he let it be known, but her breasts, well, they were just too damn small.
Readers, you don’t know me personally, but my friends would tell you I am very even-tempered. After years of struggling to get my fiery redheaded disposition under control I have succeeded and these days I rarely lose my cool. But there are times I’ll make an exception and this was one of them.
I tore him a new one, as politely as I could since we were on radio, but I’m pretty sure the words “asshole” and “don’t be” were bandied about. Of course, my friends might also mention that I am not excessively over-endowed in the chest department, which may go some way towards explaining
my reaction.
We live in a world where beauty is rewarded. Politicians with smooth faces are more likely to garner votes (Please explain Brian Cowen, Anne! – Sub Ed); tall men earn more money; attractive defendants get lighter sentences; good-looking people have more sexual partners than average and even babies are more likely to smile at you if you’re pretty. It’s unfair, but it’s instinctual.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting an attractive partner. Attractiveness signifies health and fertility, and that’s what motivates us to have sex. Nor do I blame men for liking large breasts. That’s just the way it is. What I do take issue with is that what is perceived as attractive seems to be getting narrower all the time, and that if your partner does not quite live up to some notional ideal, well, you’ve got the right to demand they do something about it.
Nobody needs their sexual partner to tell them how unattractive they are. Trust me, they already know. Sarah Grogan, author of Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women and Children, defines body image as “a person’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings about his or her body” and argues that from as young as eight, most Western women experience some dissatisfaction with their bodies. This trend is not confined to women. Grogan notes that studies have found that from the age of eight, boys are concerned about their body shape as well.
It gets worse. Studies with young people show that teenagers are more likely to find surgically enhanced bodies more sexually attractive than real ones, a trend social scientists believe is prompted by early exposure to pornography.
I doubt the blame lies solely with porn. After all, there are plenty of airbrushed images of celebrities and models out there. These people tend to be more attractive than the rest of us anyway, and after a few hours of Photoshopping, any blemish or slight imperfection is removed, making them look less like real people and more like plastic Ken and Barbie dolls.
It’s no wonder that plastic surgery is increasingly popular. Figures from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) showed a 45 percent increase in breast augmentations and a 94 percent jump in patients seeking tummy tucks between 2000 and 2008. Despite turmoil in the American economy in 2008, the ASPS reported an increase in cosmetic procedures between 2007 and 2008. An astonishing 12.1 million cosmetic procedures were performed in America in 2008, a three percent increase on 2007.
The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) reported that there was a threefold increase in the number of cosmetic procedures performed in the United Kingdom between 2003 and 2008. Like the US, the most popular procedures were breast enhancement and tummy tucks, both of which rose by 30 percent between 2007 and 2008.
Although women accounted for 91 percent of the procedures, men are increasingly turning to plastic surgery. Male breast reduction and male forehead lifts increased by an incredible 44 percent and 60 percent respectively between 2007 and 2008. The number of British men choosing plastic surgery is still relatively small. Only twenty-two men in Britain elected to undergo breast reduction in 2003, but this increased to 323 in 2008.
It’s easy to blame porn and the media, and they certainly are an influence on the popularity of plastic surgery but the reasons people develop poor body image are complex and they often have very little to do with how fit and healthy a person’s body type is or how attractive they are. But what is safe to say is that whatever the reason you dislike your thighs, breasts, ankles, chest or arse, it certainly doesn’t help if your sexual partner reinforces these negative feelings or gives you a whole raft of new ones to worry about.
Two important things come into play here. First, our self-perception is partly shaped by how others see us, and certain people’s opinions, such as a lover’s, carry more weight than others. Secondly, most of us are more likely to believe an insult than a compliment. Tell a lover that you are less than enthusiastic about her breasts, his abdomen, her tummy or his penis, and it’s going to sting.
The best lovers are not necessarily the ones with the best technique and plenty of energy – not that those are unimportant – but the ones who make you feel good about yourself. A lover that sees you as sexy and desirable will make you feel sexy and desirable. The more sexy and desirable you feel, the more sexy and desirable you become. Perception becomes reality.
If your partner’s desire for you is conditional upon the surgeon’s knife, hours spent working out in the gym, or hundreds of euros worth of beauty treatments, rest assured that as soon as you’ve ‘fixed’ the problem, another one will soon arise; while a partner who thinks you are sexy despite your flaws, or even because of them, is one worth hanging onto.
I once had a boyfriend who asked me to grow my hair. This I felt was a reasonable request as I could see that, despite protestations to the contrary from my friends, short hair didn’t suit me. After that, he took issue with my make up, my clothes, my diet, my breasts and my body in general. I realised he was right: I did need to change. So I did. I changed him for a more congenial bed companion – a cheaper, easier and less painful procedure than plastic surgery any day.