- Joshua M Brown
- February 12th, 2012
Our parents generation had the “Hemline Indicator” – you could judge the health of the economy by the length of the skirts girls were wearing, the shorter the better. the mini skirt came along during the Nifty Fifty era of the 1960′s and the bull market of the 90′s reached maturity with the micro-mini skirt. the thinking was that as people felt better about their economic situation, there was a tendency to show a bit more leg and live a little.
Hemline Indicator via Smith Barney back in the day:
But hemlines have become irrelevant in a world where Lady Gaga performs in a leotard wearing no skirt at all. So our generation may need a new indicator of financial well-being and the national mood. In the service of this, I humbly submit The Boob Indicator.
USA Today‘s HealthyPerspective blog tells us that demand for cosmetic and plastic surgery is rebounding right alongside the economy – though like the stock indexes it is still not quite at the highs of yore…
Americans got about 1.6 million cosmetic surgeries in 2011, the second year of increase after a big drop in 2009, according to an annual report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
“Consumer confidence was up, auto sales rose 10 percent, so it is not surprising that we would also see increased demand for plastic surgery procedures,” the group’s president, Malcolm Z. Roth, said in a statement.
And these days, when Americans get plastic surgery, they get big, giant shiny new boobs. Facelifts – the surgery of choice for Americans in prior generations, are only a third as popular as boob jobs. I’d bet that ratio is even more stretched in places like LA and Miami. the most popular cosmetic surgeries done in America last year in order:
- Breast augmentation (307,000)
- Nose reshaping (244,000)
- Liposuction (205,000)
- Eyelid surgery (196,000)
- Facelift (119,000)
To be clear, the indicator isn’t in the size of the breast implants themselves, but in the quantity of surgeries on a year-over-year basis. one more reason to root for the recovery’s continuation I suppose – or should I say two more reasons 
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