By Dr. Ted

That’s one of the questions that men most frequently ask me, although many women are wondering the same thing. The answer is no. Only about 1 percent of my patients are exotic dancers.

A few notes about that 1 percent: Exotic dancers could make a case for deducting their breast implants as a business expense. The precedent was set in 1994 by Cynthia Hess, who goes by the stage name Chesty Love. When she tried to write off the cost of her breast augmentation, the IRS objected, so she took her case to tax court. A judge ruled that her breasts were necessary stage props.

Patients who are dancers tell me they can “prance” as early as 7-10 days after surgery; it takes about three weeks until they are comfortable again using the pole.

About the 99 percent: My patients range in age from 18 to 63 and include bartenders, nurses, hairstylists, veterinarians, housecleaners, doctors, construction workers, ballroom dancers, stay-at-home moms, company executives, waitresses, fitness trainers, cheerleaders, policewomen who want to know how soon they can put their bulletproof vests back on, and women in all branches of the military who have e-mailed us from Iraq and Afghanistan to set up appointments for when they are back in the United States. This is not a complete list.

You can’t make generalizations about the women who get breast implants, and there are a lot of them: In 2010, about 336,000 women in the United States had breast augmentation; worldwide that number exceeded 1.5 million. Women who live in Brazil (which ranks right behind the U.S. in number of breast augmentations done each year) are lucky; breast augmentations are deductible there.

Neither should you make assumptions about the reasons women get implants. Sorry, guys. Women don’t get implants to please you. That might be an outcome, but it’s not the motivation. They get them to please themselves – to make themselves feel more feminine and sexy, to have a figure that’s more proportional, and to fit better in their dresses, bikinis and tank tops.