Even that fails to capture the pure, nauseating, sad, depressing sordidness of it all.

Maybe it is best to let the site speak for itself. Here’s how “myfreeimplants” works. Women who “have a strong desire to enhance their physical appearance through cosmetic surgery” post photos of themselves on the site along with profiles and comments. Then men whom the site amusingly calls “benefactors” (it is shorter than “lonely, horny guys who want to build their own personal pin-up girls rather than paying money to the same old porn sites”) have “unrestricted access to all of the female profiles” and “can also help the ladies” by:

• Sending a direct donation to her for her procedure
• Purchase message credits that allow you to send messages to the ladies
• Request personal custom videos from the ladies
• Receive custom photos of your favorite girls (you may even request specific outfits*)
• Chat 1-on-1 online in real time while getting to know the ladies
• and more...

“And remember...” the site reminds its benefactors, “the best part is seeing the newly transformed ladies after the surgery when they return to the website to post pictures of the results. You can take pride in knowing that you helped her improve her self esteem and self image!”

Yeah, I’m sure that’s what the “benefactors” are interested in doing…improving female self-esteem.

Nobody using the site is doing anything wrong, exactly. Men are paying money to feel like Pygmalion; women get free implants so they can look like Pamela Anderson, at least between their neck and ribcage. They are all consenting adults. Men can spend their money the way they want; it’s better than buying a lottery ticket, I suppose. Women can do what they want to their bodies. And if women make men spend their money stupidly, and men make women disfigure themselves in return, well, what happens on this website is a just a microcosm of the male-female relationship throughout civilization.

Still, the site feels wrong. Ethical values are guides to living in society that human beings have developed, learned and embraced over time. The values work, and have worked for centuries. Any time activities that challenge these values become commonplace and acceptable, there is a real chance that life for all of us will be diminished, and that our enjoyment of it will be less. I don’t relish the prospect of living in a society where men use the power of money to surgically alter women they have never met, just to realize their juvenile fantasies. I don’t want to live in a society where women believe that the size of their breasts will determine their human worth, and are willing to humiliate themselves on the web to get themselves “enhanced.”

The website may be contributing to the development of such a society. It may also simply be addressing the needs of a society that already exists. Women would not become topless pole dancers if men didn’t pay to watch them. Are topless bars unethical? There are dozens of commercial relationships in America where men and women exploit and profit from each other’s weaknesses without coercion or misrepresentation. Perhaps Myfreeimplants.com isn’t unethical at all, but just a natural progression in the acceptance and rejection of values that is part of the ongoing evolution of civilization.

I can’t stop thinking of Leah Thompson’s performance as the alternate-reality version of Marty McFly’s mother in “Back to the Future II,” her pumped-up breasts symbolizing her complete corruption and domination by the villainous “Biff.” That alternate reality would include myfreeimplants. Maybe my gut feeling that the site is unethical is just the “yuck factor” at work. As discussed elsewhere on the Scoreboard, the yuck factor comes into play when something is new and jolting, but a fair and dispassionate ethical analysis will reveal the new development to be well within acceptable ethical margins. A BBC documentary about the website was entitled, “A Hundred Men Own My Breasts.” Yuck! But is it wrong?

When society begins embracing destructive, unhealthy, selfish and offensive behavior and attitudes, we can choose several paths. We can try to minimize the damage, resist the decay. We can oppose the trend by protesting or condemning it. We can quietly try to set better standards with our own conduct. We also can endorse the new behavior by engaging in it. Finally, we can try to exploit the problem, and profit by making it worse, supporting it, and celebrating it.

For example, we can try to maintain civilized conduct in public by being polite and civil, dressing neatly, bathing, and being respectful to strangers. On the other hand, we can become shock-jocks on the radio, sell T-Shirts that have “Fuck You!” printed on them. Or we can become lawyers, and collect legal fees on behalf of clients filing lawsuits to keep airlines from kicking passengers off who are dressed in bikinis or who smell like goats. We can oppose the spread of drugs in the schools, or, in the alternative, we can sell bongs for a living, or get laughs by ridiculing parents who support anti-drug measures on TV, like Bill Maher. We can try to explain to children why cheating in school is wrong, or we can run a website that provides custom-written essays to students for a fee. All of the exploitive choices lend themselves to the same defense---I’m just giving people what they want--- and the same rationalization---If I didn’t do it, someone else would---and both are undoubtedly true.

Both also miss the point of ethical conduct, which is ultimately to create a better world. I am well aware of the counter-argument to this, which is the assertion that others have the right to pursue their own ideas of a better world, even if it is Hefnerworld, where all women wear EE push-up bras, where men can happily and guiltlessly exploit women’s insecurities to control them, and women exercise their personal freedom by turning themselves into walking, talking Barbie dolls. But I don’t believe for a second that anyone really has that objective. The objective of the owners of myfreeimplants.com, I am sufficiently certain, is to facilitate unhealthy attitudes and destructive conduct that they know exist, and to profit from them. They don’t care about society, values, or the world. They care about themselves.

Ideally, everyone in our society would recognize an obligation to try to make it better…fairer, kinder, more just, more civil, kind, and humane. It is unreasonable to maintain that anything short of altruism is unethical, but it is not unduly burdensome to hold that an ethical member of society must at least avoid conduct calculated to make society worse. I believe myfreeimplants reinforces conduct and attitudes that degrades both men and women, and by that standard, it is unethical.

And also: Yuck!