Implant raffle goes tits up

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by George Maddux

A lottery to be held April 14 at Sherbrooke's Well Pub offering a top prize of a free boob job fell flat last week as management cancelled under local pressure. The nightclub, popular with Townships-based college kids, had been offering a prize of either a breast-implant operation worth $4,000 or a $1,000 cash equivalent.

According to Anne LeBel of the Centre de santé des femmes de l'Estrie, a female Université de Sherbrooke student objected to the gimmick and attempted to solicit opposition through several women's groups, most of whom were otherwise occupied. LeBel's group eventually helped obtain 1,885 signatures on a petition to denounce the contest. "We consider it a trivialization of a surgical operation that has a big impact on a person's life," says LeBel. "And we find it unfortunate that they're trying to promote the idea that everybody should correspond to the same physical model to be happy. It's just ridiculous."

Initially the bar refused the petition and ignored demands that the prize be changed, earning them a shipment of lemons from the organization. But last Friday, co-owners Pierre-Philipe Jutras and Louise Delisle kept the Mirror abreast of their thinking through a faxed message bemoaning "the misinterpretation of the contest by certain groups" and stressing that "many women had been filling out the participation coupons." They also put everybody who signed the petition on the VIP guest list for a new event to take place on the night the implants would have been awarded.