The Coalition Solves the Nation’s Most Pressing Problem

Congratulations to Germany’s grand coalition—CDU and SPD, governing in tandem with the energy of two people who despise each other at a mandatory team-building retreat—for finally addressing the existential threat that has kept the nation up at night: teenagers getting boob jobs.

Per a supplementary agreement to the coalition contract, cosmetic surgical procedures on minors without a medical justification are to be banned. Around ten percent of all cosmetic procedures are currently performed on under-20s, according to CDU and CSU figures. The new rules would allow exceptions where there’s documented psychological necessity—severe distress caused by appearance—or genuine medical need, like correcting burns or congenital deformities. Everything else: off the table. Previously, parental consent alone was sufficient.

Jens Spahn, the CDU’s health policy spokesman, said: Protecting young people also means protecting them from a distorted beauty obsession. Subjecting a growing body to such a massive intervention unnecessarily can have devastating physical and psychological consequences. I find it completely unacceptable to give a 15-year-old a breast enlargement as a Christmas present.

He’s not wrong. That sentence—a breast enlargement as a Christmas present for a 15-year-old—should not exist outside of very specific genres of bad fiction. The ban makes sense. It’s just hard to celebrate with any real force when the same coalition was doing approximately nothing about wage inequality, mass surveillance, or whatever else was actually grinding people down that winter. But sure—the teenagers’ tits are safe now. Progress.