Without Breasts There Is No Paradise

My assistant, Janie, brought to my attention a soap opera in Latin America that has become wildly popular. The soap opera "Sin Senos no Hay Paraiso" is on NBC's Telemundo and is based on a book inspired by a true story about a group of young women that have decided to do whatever it takes to escape their humble town where poverty reigns. The story takes place in two locations: Colombia and Mexico. and The story is mostly revolved around Catalina, a beautiful young high school girl obsessed about getting breast augmentation in order to become a high class prostitute in order to get her family (her mother and her brother) out of poverty. Her schoolmates and best friend Yesica have breast implants and tell Catalina that the only way to really make money is to get the operation and get the biggest breasts possible. They remind her daily that men only care about breasts in the business. Along with her school mates and the help of Yesica she is able to "book" jobs in order to try to raise money for her operation. She believes breast implants is a short cut to easy money hence happiness.

However since she is inexperienced and naive she has relations with other men, all with fruitless jobs and bad intentions. She now encounters Lorena from Mexico and she promises Catalina and other pre-op girls modeling contracts in Mexico with the condition that they be operated by her surgeon. Little do they know that she is working for a narcotrafficker, Martinez, and the shady surgeon plan to fill the implants with bags of heroin in order to sneak the drugs out of Colombia to Mexico. (Crazy!?) So Catalina is then tricked into going through the augmentation and she has no idea that she is carrying a significant amount of drugs in her chest. Although she thought that once she had breasts she would be happier and life would be better, she is realizing that she is now being humiliated and mistreated and further away from happiness which ironically she thought breasts would bring her.

Amazing how in our culture and in other cultures breasts are praised and "sought after" for various reasons. The storyline is a little out there, but its interesting to see what becomes a hit in different places all over the world. Hey, we've got All my Children and Days of Our Lives.