Do You Mind if I Put My Hand on it?: Journeys into the Worlds of the Weird. Mark Dolan
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Money, power,’ as she told me over and over again. Sheyla needs the boobs. They are a life support system. The day she had her first op was the first day that she decided for the first time to like herself. So naturally one consequence, and this is the plastic surgery trap, is that to have that feeling, you’ll inevitably go back for more. Before we depart the beach, which is now lit only by the moon, and passing police cars, she calls her plastic surgeon on the phone. It’s a jovial chat. It’s like she’s talking to her hairdresser. She has decided she wants to have her procedure an hour earlier tomorrow. I’m shocked at the informal nature of the chat she’s having with this very important man.
I bid her farewell and she goes off for some beauty sleep, prior to having some beauty inflicted on her by a surgeon’s blade. I’m surprised to learn that neither her sister or indeed any of her family will be in attendance tomorrow. I return to Sheyla’s sister’s house for another sweet coffee, to find out why. Sadly barbeque boy isn’t there. He’s probably broiling meat and installing hooks in someone else’s house. I ask her how she feels about her baby sister’s plans. I feel I already know the answer.
‘I am really worried about not only me but the whole family is worried about it,’ she says. ‘Because it becomes an obsession, a huge obsession for her and we really don’t like that to become a health problem, and nowadays going to a surgery for her is just the same as going to have her nails done, so I really don’t like it. I don’t wanna be like partner with her, when something bad comes up, so I don’t go to the surgeries with her any more.’
This is a tragic revelation. To see how someone can hurt others so much, by hurting themselves. Sheyla is far from the only victim. And her sister is across all the issues Sheyla is oblivious to, or in denial of, namely the considerable risks attached to what she is doing.
‘It really seems to upset you what she is doing to herself,’ I say. ‘How hard is it for you to see this?’
‘It is very hard actually, it makes all of us very sad indeed. We all like, we get sad but there is nothing we can do, we get sad.’
Morning has broken and I’m feeling slightly emotionally hungover from the madness of the previous day. As I push bits of hotel breakfast around my plate, I mull over the irony that today is Sheyla’s ‘special day’, when really, special is the last word I’d use. Sometimes when I’m in these situations, I feel I should make some kind of intervention. Like maybe when I’m in the operating theatre, I should rugby tackle the anaesthetist to the floor prior to the op. It’s like those cameramen and women who film a zebra being stalked by a hungry lion. Don’t they sometimes want to put the camera down and shout ‘He’s behind you!’?
But above and beyond asking her countless times what the hell she’s thinking and saying ‘Don’t do this!’, I don’t feel I can go any further. No more so than I could do with my own sister. Ultimately she is a sovereign individual and she’s mistress of her own destiny. And if her own family can’t stop her, then what hope for me? Arriving at the swanky plastic surgery clinic where she is to be pumped up, I go up to meet Sheyla in her hospital bedroom. She’s dressed in a plain white bed gown – as dressed-down as you’ll ever see this woman. I kiss her on both cheeks and ask her how she’s feeling. She clearly hasn’t had much sleep and her face is puffy. I recall my chat with her sister the night before.
‘She is obviously quite upset about you know, your operations,’ I say.
‘I don’t listen to anyone except myself and I don’t like people try to change me. People who try to change me I just keep away, them away from me.’
‘Even the people who really care about you like your family?’ I ask.
‘Even the people who care about me because is all about me, I know what I am doing and I happy to do what I am doing. That is why I wanna go bigger, because I want to be bigger, I wanted to break the world record, that makes me happy. I think my breasts is the most beautiful thing I have on my body and as long as I am awake I am going to keep them, keep growing.’
We are interrupted by a nurse coming in to give Sheyla a pill of some sort. This last exchange is typical of what I have learned about her. She is driven, an unstoppable force, her mind uncluttered with concern for the upset she is causing to those around her. This is not to be harsh about Sheyla. This is something she is sincere about having to do. It is a compulsion. This is genuinely what she wants and has to do. Whether she should be allowed to do it is another question. Her plastic surgeon is no doubt the best money can buy, but I ask myself whether she could go as big as she’s about to, in America or Britain; I’m not sure it would happen. Brazil is number two in the world for the most plastic surgeries behind the USA, but here the range of what you can have done, and to what extent, is greater.
As for today, it isn’t just her breasts that she is having fiddled with. She is also having a chin lift, liposuction and botox. Well, you know, when you drop the car into the garage for a new clutch, you normally ask the mechanic to fix that wonky wing mirror and faulty taillight while he’s at it. So what’s the difference, right…?
From the moment Sheyla and I first met, she has been imploring me to go into the operation with her. I’m actually not that squeamish about that kind of thing and have always found all aspects of medicine utterly compelling. I think being a doctor or nurse has to be the closest you’ll get jobwise to really making a difference in people’s lives. Dead or not dead. Well or not well. That is often the consequence of a medic’s day at the office. As Sheyla is wheeled into the theatre, I have the slight concern that, as she is such a force of nature, perhaps she is immune to anaesthetic, and will chat incessantly during the procedure about her boobies and her undying regard for ‘Dolly Part’. Fortunately she is not immune and one of the few upsides of this regrettable exercise, is ninety minutes of silence. As tubes pump and machines bleep, I’m struck by the stupid irony that in parts of the world there are no hospital beds for people who need them to carry on living, while elsewhere there are people having ops that are resolutely unnecessary. Maybe I’ll be eating my words when I go in for my brow lift in ten years’ time…
So instead of having new implants, Sheyla is having her existing ones filled to capacity. I was shocked at how serious an operation it was. The surgeon cuts right at the lower edge of her areola, that’s the round darker circle that circumnavigates the nipple (OK, I can’t describe breasts). He essentially slices into what looks like the most tender part of the bosom. It’s then flipped open, like the wide round lid on a plastic sports bottle. Visible immediately is the clear bag – the implant. Sheyla looks at this point like a particularly creative drugs mule. The salty water is injected into the implant via the narrow tube Sheyla was waving around in front of me the previous day. At this point the areola is flapped down again and stitched up. Ow.
I make my way out of the theatre and head to the canteen for a tea and a plain biscuit. I feel like I’ve been operated on. I wait for Sheyla to come round. I then hear that the operation was OK and that she is now a world record holder. Officially the most enhanced woman in the world. Clutching the best bunch of flowers a Brazilian petrol station has to offer, I head to her room. As I open the door, as always with Sheyla, it’s not what I’m expecting. She’s lying in the bed, bandaged, bruised, groggy. That’s understandable. But in the room with her is a photographer with a massive camera, snapping away. He asks her to sit up a bit. ‘Look this way. Look that way,’ he says. What’s going on? Before I get to asking, I greet her with a kiss. I try to be upbeat. She’s just had a significant amount surgery and is fragile in every possible way.
‘Look at this lady. How are you doing?’ I say.
‘Is that flowers for me?’ she asks sweetly.
‘Of course they are for you, who do you think they’re for?’
‘Oh my God, you did not need to!’ she replies.
‘Of course! So, who’s the photographer?’
‘This photographer, he’s for my publicity,’ she explains, slurring her words from the medication. ‘So when I need to tell my story I have those photographs.’
‘Are