Timmie Jean Lindsey (born 1932), American housewife, was the first person in the world to undergo
plastic surgery for
breast augmentation
In medicine, breast augmentation and augmentation mammoplasty are terms that describe a cosmetic surgery procedure that uses either a Breast implant, breast implant or a fat-graft to realise a mammoplasty to increase the size, change the shape ...
by means of
silicone
In Organosilicon chemistry, organosilicon and polymer chemistry, a silicone or polysiloxane is a polymer composed of repeating units of siloxane (, where R = Organyl group, organic group). They are typically colorless oils or elastomer, rubber ...
implants, in 1962.
At the time, she was 29 years old and the divorced mother of six children. Hoping to have a large
tattoo
A tattoo is a form of body modification made by inserting tattoo ink, dyes, or pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to form a design. Tattoo artists create these designs using several tattooing processes ...
removed from her chest, she visited a
plastic surgeon at the
Jefferson Davis Hospital in
Houston
Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
. The surgeon, Frank Gerow, was one of a group working on the concept of breast implants, and was looking for patients to volunteer for the surgery. She told them she was more interested in having them work on her ears, and the surgeons agreed to do that procedure as well. The procedure went forward under the direction of Gerow and his colleague Thomas Cronin, and was deemed a success at the time. Lindsey kept fairly quiet about her breast enlargement for many years – one boyfriend never knew for example. It was only decades later that she told many of her friends and family about it.
Fifty years later, Lindsey still had her original implants and reported general satisfaction with the procedure, despite pains and other concerns over the years. She never joined the groups of women (including several of her own relatives) who filed lawsuits about health problems associated with the implants, although she reported having experienced many of those problems.
[Claire Bowes & Cordelia Hebblethwaite]
" A brief history of breast enlargements"
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...
, March 28, 2012.
References
1932 births
Living people
People from Texas
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