Guess what? Men don't mind seeing naked women
ROME (Reuters) - Most Italians think nude sunbathing is perfectly natural and don't mind crossing paths with bottomless beach-goers -- even when those bottoms are unsightly, survey results released Sunday said.
While topless sunbathing is widely practiced in Italy, bottoms are usually required and nudists can face fines of more than 500 euros ($595) on some beaches, the Italian Naturalist Federation said.
But the federation said a poll it commissioned from a mainstream media outlet found nearly 70 percent of those surveyed said they would sunbath nude if everyone else did it. More than 80 percent said nudism was not erotic, but natural.
Women were more frequently bothered by nude sunbathing than men. Just over 40 percent of women said they did not like seeing other naked females on the beach, while just 5 percent of men shared their opinion about nude women.
The survey found nearly two-thirds of men said they weren't bothered by nude male sunbathers.
When it came to unattractive or "brutto" sunbathers, most of those surveyed in the country that champions physical beauty said they didn't object to seeing them naked either.
Only about 16 percent said they were vexed by unattractive women nudists and 9.7 percent objected to unsightly men.
The Federation said the survey would bolster their hopes of getting more beaches set aside for nude sunbathing. They needed to do a survey to find this out? Startling revalations.. wow... not to mention huge waste of money. Who would have guessed?
Experts warn of risky silicone 'pump parties'
SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A dangerous underground of "pump parties" has sprung up around the country catering to transgender individuals seeking more feminine features through cheap -- sometimes deadly -- black-market silicone injections, experts say.
Two San Diego transgender women were near death on Friday after unlicensed practitioners injected them with liquid silicone at a "pump party" five days earlier, officials said.
Police are searching for a Los Angeles-area woman suspected of injecting as many as a dozen people at two parties that day. None of those at the second party has contacted police.
The two injured women, aged 30 and 45, are among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who have sought the illegal treatments to save money and to avoid dealing with the medical establishment, experts say. Their goal is to make their hips, lips, cheeks and buttocks appear more feminine.
"I've been hearing about pump parties for many years but more in the past few," said Dr. Walter Bockting, the coordinator of transgender health services at the University of Minnesota's Center for Human Sexuality. "Being beautiful and shapely is very important to certain segments of the transgender community -- it's a self-esteem builder for people who are feeling rejected by their families and communities."
At pump parties, groups of patients typically receive silicone injections from an unlicensed, untrained person who is often using non-medical silicone. Costs tend to run between $200 and $1,000 per treatment, police said.
Industrial-grade silicone, floor products and sealers, and a host of contaminants including motor oil and paraffin have all turned up in post-party patients.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has prohibited direct injection of silicone since 1992. Medical-grade silicone now can be inserted into bodies legally only if it is encapsulated in a sac -- as in a breast implant -- and does not come into contact with tissue.
RESPIRATORY ARREST POSSIBLE
The black market silicone and contaminants can trigger an immune system reaction that results in respiratory arrest --- as happened to the two San Diego women, police said.
There also have been cases of blood poisoning, including a death in Georgia in 2003, and other complications that led to the deaths of three women in Houston and a Florida woman, also in 2003.
Still, some in the transgender community see silicone injection as a reasonable choice and many Web sites offer advice on how to get injections more safely.
"Are you going to trust your best girlfriend or a doctor who may be rude to you and refuse to treat you or disrespect your reasons?" said Mara Keistling, of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in Washington, D.C. "We provide people with advice because we hope to have people do this as safely as possible."
Doctors warn that there is no safe way to inject silicone.
"We know silicone isn't safe when it's not encapsulated," said Janie Cordray of the Medical Board of California. "We know it migrates, that it often becomes part of the tissue and can't be removed, that it causes chronic, serious health problems.
"It's really sad that people can't wait and have appropriate, safer surgery."
Adult News Archive Page 7
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