The Unfortunate Chronology of Melissa Gilbert’s Breasts: Size Doesn’t Matter

So Half-Pint had a boob job.  And then she didn’t.

Melissa Gilbert is best known for her role as Laura, the bonneted daughter of a devout farmer (played by Michael Landon) in the popular TV series based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie.”

Gilbert appeared today on Good Morning America to talk her recent surgery to have her breast implants surgically removed.

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The chronology of the star’s notable breasts goes something like this:

• Gilbert was, by her own admission, a “late bloomer.”  Even as her co-star Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on the show, was developing curves, Melissa Gilbert was not; and Melissa was embarrassed to be flat as a rail while Alison graduated to fill out her bikini.
• In 1981, at the age of 16, Gilbert was playing an adult version of her character; and she was encouraged to wear a padded bra–bringing the perky star’s breast size from A to B.
• In 1989, at age 24, Gilbert became pregnant with her first son, Dakota.  Her breasts grew and grew until, she reveals on her blog, they reached their maximum C-cup size.  She nursed Dakota for nearly a year, and described her joy at being able to meet her infant’s needs:  “Breast feeding,” she wrote, “created a perfect circle of love, nurturing, bonding and connection with another human being.”  
• But after the star-mom stopped nursing, her breasts went back to their natural size but not, she confesses, their regular position.  They were “lower…much, much lower.”  Gilbert’s then-husband once described her breasts as “socks full of marbles with knots at the top.”  Shamed, Gilbert began wearing a bra around the clock, even when she slept or made love.
• Three years later, Gilbert and her husband divorced; and Gilbert began to worry about engaging in sexual relations with another man.  Fearing how someone would look at her, she resolved to have breast implants.
• In about 1994, Gilbert had her first breast implants.  The first implants were saline; later, she would have them removed and replaced by new silicone implants.  She wrote about that first surgery:  “The surgery went perfectly.  I was sore for a while but nothing too awful and my boobs looked really natural.  Most importantly,…and most pathetically really…my self-esteem went back up. 
• When Gilbert’s second son Michael was born, she again decided to breastfeed.  With her already augmented breasts, she grew again–this time until her breasts were a size 34-EE.
• In 2004, Melissa read that breast implants should be replaced every ten to fifteen years.  Her own implants were already 12 years old; so she underwent another breast surgery, this time using silicone implants and adding a breast uplift.
• But she worried.  She worried about the risk of silicone leaking into her body.  She worried that she would have to have periodic replacements throughout her life, and imagined having breast implants at age 80.  Finally, she decided to return to her normal state.
• On January 6, Gilbert had the implants surgically removed, downsizing from a DD cup size to a modest B.  “Just an average B,” she said, “not a big B.”

I WISH I COULD TELL YOU that Melissa Gilbert learned from her experience, and that she now eschews the choice to alter one’s body in the quest for a positive image.  Not so.

She does offer some good reflections on her blog.

The shallowness of my existence at that point brought me to my knees. I had to change. I had to look inward and address my issues (this looking inward is a constant process by the way)…. It was time for me to change. I had to focus on what was real and true. I’d lost myself somehow.

And this:

Aging is a gift not a curse.  
Love yourself.
You are perfectly beautiful.
You are enough.

She acknowledges the positive health effects of removing the implants.  “Not only do I feel healthier and better,” she says,

“…but I don’t have these inappropriately large breasts that were wrong for my body, kind of getting the way.  I sleep more comfortably. And the bonus is I have disc issues in my neck. And I have absolutely no pulling on my shoulders. And all the pain in my neck has completely disappeared since the surgery.”

She warns women who may be considering implants that they’ll have to have repeat surgeries every 10 or 15 years, throughout their lives.

BUT WHAT I WANT TO HEAR–and what’s still missing from her continuing testimony–is this:

God made you perfect.  You, his most precious creation, are beautiful just as you are.

If anyone–a spouse, a partner, the ogling public–thinks that you need to undergo a surgical procedure in order to be acceptable in society, you should flee.  

It’s what’s inside that counts.

God doesn’t make mistakes.   

Catholic Answers summarizes the view of moral theologians regarding plastic surgery, as follows:

Plastic surgery would seem to be warranted if it would provide a significant therapeutic benefit in some regard, either physical (e.g., reconstructive surgery to restore function or utility in cases of accident or birth defect) or psychological. This is provided that the procedure does not damage some other equal or greater good and provided that it is not intrinsically immoral.

Plastic surgery would seem to be permitted—even without significant therapeutic effect—provided that it did not damage a significant good and provided that the procedure is not intrinsically immoral.

Plastic surgery would seem to be impermissible if it damaged a good greater than that to be achieved, being venial if the difference in the goods were light and potentially mortal if the difference in the goods were grave.