Breast implants - in most cases, why?

One thing that has puzzled me for years is why some women have felt the need to have breast implants. I can understand why some women who have been unfortunate enough to become afflicted with breast cancer, necessitating partial or total mastectomy, have wanted to replace the removed cancerous tissue to allow them to regain their former physical profile and perhaps boost their own self-esteem. But I have never understood why a perfectly healthy woman would feel the need to 'enhance' her natural breast profile with artificial implants.

Some women naturally have larger breasts than others, but provided a woman is healthy, what is the point? Is it to boost their own self-worth, or to please a husband or boyfriend? Let's face it, men have different sizes of penises - some 'small', some 'average' and some 'large', but if every man who had (or felt he had) a penis which was too small underwent implant surgery to try and make it appear bigger, it would be a sad commentary both on them and whoever may have encouraged them to do so.

I feel exactly the same about botox or lip enhancement procedures. For goodness sakes, if there is no medical requirement for any of these procedures and they are motivated solely by vanity or to 'please' someone else, then my strong view is that people should leave well enough alone.

This little article has obviously been prompted by the news stories today that many thousands of women had breast implants made using what is described as non-medical grade silicon, manufactured by a now-defunct French company and that there have been some cases of the implants splitting and causing toxic effects in the body.

I seem to have heard this same kind of story a number of times over the years - I'm pretty sure I first heard of this kind of problem at least 20 years ago, perhaps involving breast implants manufactured by a different company for all I know, but just as with the potential dangers associated with smoking tobacco, the risks have been known for a long, long time and in the case of breast implants there is no addictive substance involved, simply what are in my view 'skewed' notions of what constitutes 'beauty'.