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

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.