Do You Mind if I Put My Hand on it?: Journeys into the Worlds of the Weird

‘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 you really in the mood to do publicity?’ I say. ‘You’ve just had a major operation.’

Sheyla abruptly barks at the snapper, ‘Come on, take some pictures.’

‘But you’ve got, like, bandages on and everything.’ She takes no notice of me. It’s a macabre scene. She’s still got the lines that the surgeon’s made with a pen for the lipo. And she’s got bandages on her face and yet she’s doing press photographs. She’s a control freak out of control. I take this opportunity to ask her about the record now.

‘So are you the number one now, the world record holder?’ I ask.

‘As far as I know I’m the world record in breast implants.’

‘And how does that feel?’ I ask.

‘I feel great. I just, I can’t be jumpy now cos I just got them done.’

‘You can’t what?’ I ask.

‘I just want to jump,’ she says.

I wouldn’t if I were her.

She then turns to me, Bambi eyes, and says, ‘Do they look bigger to you?’

‘They do look bigger, yes,’ I say diplomatically. I can’t tell. They were always too big. And just terrible.

‘A lot bigger?’

‘Yes, they’re even bigger.’ There are men the world over having the opposite conversation about their wives’ arses. Oh the vagaries of the female psyche.

And still Sheyla seeks the validation of a near stranger.

‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘But you see I can add a little bit more.’

‘What, another op?’ I ask, heart sinking. I’m not hearing this.

‘Yes,’ she replies.

‘More liquid to go in there?’ I point to her chest which is now closer to my finger than it was three hours ago.

Sheyla nods.

‘I thought this was your last operation, I’m quite surprised to hear there’s going to be another one?’

‘But I always break promises,’ she says brazenly.

‘That makes me worried because I think maybe you’re going to have these operations forever…’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. She clearly does.

‘But are you going to ever…sort of, you know, say enough is enough. To say I’m big enough now and my health is a big priority?’

‘Yeah, my health is big priority but I want to be happy with myself. This is gonna be my thirty-second operation.’

‘Thirty-second?’ I ask. Am I hearing right?

‘And I’m still beautiful, I think I’m beautiful. I just…you saw my picture from before and after. Nobody believed that red, pink dress was this person, a world record is something really big for me. You got to be remembered and I want to be remembered on today.’

I’m trying to decipher how much of this is drug induced. A bit like a barroom chat with Pete Doherty.

She goes on, ‘I just want to make my family happy, I don’t hurt anybody. Why the hell I have to listen to people, if I’m not happy, why? Do you think I want to try to kill myself again?’

‘It strikes me that your breasts have kind of been part of your recovery from depression? You sort of associate your breasts with happiness? Is that right?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, I’m happy the way I am, I’m happy. I’m really happy. In a way because I want to close my past. I want to forget everything that happening to me. Everything.’

Her declaration of how happy she is arrives at the same time as her tears. Another contradiction in the muddled mind of this remarkable young woman. I’m hugely disappointed that she is announcing that she’ll have yet another operation after this, and for a moment I can feel some flavour of how it must be for her family all the time. Being told one thing, only for another thing to actually happen. Sheyla is a rollercoaster. Spending time with her is like being on that rollercoaster. It makes you queasy, shocked, hysterical and at all times you have a trickle of anxiety in the pit of your stomach. The large breasts in Sheyla’s case are, as I said, not rational, which is why I found her story even more sad that that of Minka. Yes Sheyla has some fame, and she certainly makes more money than she would if she was stacking shelves at the Brazilian equivalent of Morrisons.

And who am I and who is anyone to tell her to be ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’, ‘average’ and have the poverty that often accompanies that? She has, through sheer force of personality and two large breasts, willed a career and a livelihood for herself. I enjoyed my time with Sheyla and, like lots of things that aren’t good for you, I liked her. I wonder about her future hopes for love. Any kind of relationship with this woman, even mild friendship, would be bad for the blood pressure, but like that slice of streaky bacon, probably worth shortening your life slightly for. I hope someone nice has the years to spare. And the energy. And the patience. And he’s got to like large breasts…

Curiously, as I look back on my experience of this world, all of these women cut the figure of a tragic heroine. There’s a strange mix of courage and vulnerability displayed in their booming figures. It’s a gauntlet thrown down to the world. ‘Look at me! Be mesmerised by me. Look at how much power I harness over both all of mankind, and myself.’ Indeed to the big boob fanatics, these women are like goddesses. Semifictional deities. But I’m not a big boob fan, and I looked into the dark underbelly of these goddesses. I saw the literal and metaphorical shadow cast by these women’s breasts. And it wasn’t pretty. Sheyla’s done this to her body, because, bluntly, she’s screwed up. This was her crazy solution. In a sense it worked, because she’s still here. And she has made a career of it. But she who lives by the large breast will die by it. I’m struck by how it might be for Sheyla when her body is her last loved one to say no. To construct an entire personality around a certain set of physical attributes whacks of a deal with the devil. Or at least with the plastic surgeon.