Chavez Rails at Teenage Breast Implants Gift Fad

[otohara]

The President Urged His Countrymen to Give Up Excessive Consumerism

President Hugo Chavez railed against a new trend in beauty-conscious Venezuela: giving girls breast implants for their 15th birthday.

"Now some people think, 'My daughter's turning 15, let's give her breast enlargements.' That's horrible. It's the ultimate degeneration," Chavez said late Sunday on his weekly TV show that lasted a record eight hours.

Venezuela is well known for its beauty queens, who have regularly won world crowns, and many women have plastic surgery in the oil-rich country where there is widespread spending on consumer items that would be considered luxuries elsewhere.

But Chavez, the anti-U.S., self-styled revolutionary who came to office in 1999, is seeking to change those attitudes to create what he calls the "new man" to build a socialist society in this South American nation. http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3642435&page=1