Vanity, Thy Name Is Woman

"At the very least, nine women engaged Ms. Reid's services. All nine women suffered bodily harm as a result."
"[She] preyed on [women, lied in response to questions, was] dismissive, insensitive and uncaring]."
"[Marilyn Reid was] born with both male and female sexual organs [underwent] affirmation [surgery at the age of seven, and was hereafter raised as a female.] She was ridiculed and bullied because of her deep voice."
Ontario Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly

Marilyn Reid, 50, was convicted of eight counts of aggravated assault in January. Reid lied to clients, claiming she had been a nurse or doctor in various other countries and even showed her own rear end to show the effectiveness of the procedure she was offering.

In this age of public revelations so common on the Internet when gossip moves at the speed of light, we know strange things we would never have become familiar with in an earlier era of hushed silence on all matters pertaining to unusual gender orientations and anything remotely concerned with the secretive portions relating to sex surrounding the human anatomy. Now, social media reveals all.

Oddly enough, at a time when people of every age and representing all social strata take to social media to casually and trustingly reveal intimate details about their lives, the very same people insist that though those intimate details are available to the curious across the vast universe of the Internet, government agencies of all stripes have no right to infringe upon their personal data.

And certainly because of the swift relay of gossipy tidbits through the various instruments of social media when everyone carries a smartphone and relies heavily on their Twitter account for updates in a celebrity culture where perfection of the human form is exemplified by some very well endowed Hollywood actors, male and female, people aspire more than ever to exhibit those same curvaceous or muscular physiognomies.

Cosmetic enhancement of body features have become so popular in today's culture of 'look at me!' that plastic surgeons bless the day they decided to specialize in promising all callers they can become Venus or Adonis, at a price. And that's just the point; the price. It's a costly process to have some professional in plastic surgery perform those transformative miracles.

So when someone advertises that for a relatively modest price they can provide the eager body-perfectionist with the plump curves they hunger for, the net is cast to haul in clients who often don't ask too many questions before handing over their hard-earned cash for the favour of body enhancement. The result is that a covert, unlicensed coterie of predators are on the prowl for easy money.

One of those predatory sharks was a woman with a troubled background -- whose own experience as a child of being hugely different from her peers at a critical time in her emotionally formative years -- who felt she was more than capable of providing a service for which she had no practical medical background. Marilyn Reid of Toronto, 50 years of age, put up photos of women's posteriors whose fulsome curvature appealed to flat-bottomed women.

Nine of whom responded to her advertisement that she would provide them with the body shape to complement their dreams of Venushood. Her website spoke of injecting a substance called polymethylmethacrylate, a substance not authorized for use in Canada. But in fact, what she appeared to have injected the buttocks of the nine women who came to her for her cosmetic enhancement services with, was stale, industrial-grade silicone.

What's more her skillful injection was carried out by use of an ordinary caulking gun. For this service carried out in unsterile conditions, the women paid between $7,200 and $1,800, to finally achieve the profile of their imagination which everyone would admire and men would desire. Except, that isn't the way it worked. All nine women experienced instead, infections requiring surgery to remove as much of the injected material as possible.

They suffered fevers, abscesses and pain and had to be put on antibiotics. And since the disfigurement and pain was located in the posterior, it must have been extremely difficult to go on normally throughout the course of a day. Sitting, lying on one's back, bending over, using the body as one ordinarily does without much thought of discomfort and pain, was obviously absent in their lives for a considerable amount of time as they convalesced.

And throughout the process experienced a burning sense of embarrassment. That they would ever have submitted themselves to such a primitive procedure, without even knowing what the substance being pumped into their behinds was comprised of, taking on trust the promises of Ms. Reid that all would be well. And then, experiencing the humiliation and fear of being ignored when their conditions became obvious and they turned to her for help.

Only one of the woman lent her experience to the court case. All of the women hoped that their disfigurement and discomfort would pass without medical intervention, and as a result kept putting off seeking medical help, unable to bear the misery of publicly revealing their condition. Once they did attend a clinic or hospital, they were unable to describe what exactly had been injected in their behinds for the simple reason they didn't know.

In passing judgement, Justice Kelly noted that the woman on trial before her had no previous criminal record. The fact that she pleaded guilty was in her favour. And her sad history as a child brought her some sympathy from the judge. Not enough, however, to persuade the judge that a prison sentence hadn't been well earned. And so, Marilyn Reid of Toronto was sentenced to eight years in prison for her actions as a posterior-enhancing enabler.