Each blinking of her massive eyelashes seems sufficient to fan a pharaoh.
A Cupid's bow mouth and long, dyed-blonde hair falls past her shoulders to her, ahem, ample chest, finishing the image of a dictionary-definition bombshell.
But these saline headlights aren't the product of marriage to some wrinkled entrepreneur or the investment of an adult filmmaker. They arrived through ol'-fashioned Tennessee elbow grease. Kind of.
Tesha Nicholson—a 25-year-old model, mother and muscle car restoration business owner—earned her set of D's on Myfreeimplants.com. It's a site that combines altruism, voyeurism and a good dose of capitalism to provide cash-strapped women with the perfect mammary accessories.
Women set up Facebook-esque pages, enticing male benefactors to send them messages at $1 a pop. In return, the men get to chat, see provocative pictures, and perhaps make additional donations, all in the name of raising the enhanced breast-quotient of the world.
Collecting the dough for a $5,000 operation is no instantaneous task. It can take as long as two years or as little as eight weeks—the record—depending upon one's hustle. But with 50,000 registered benefactors and only 5,000 women seeking operations, the odds are in the boobs' favor.
Think of it as really-soft-core porn. Women sell themselves with their attention and the mundane minutiae of life to lonely doctors, lawyers, paramedics, landscapers and, of course, a few weirdoes. Everything's anonymous.
In the end, benefactors will never know Tesha's real name or where she lives. Nor will they ever see the fruits of their expenditure in the flesh. But the strange, quasi-symbiotic exchange here doesn't creep her out. They're regular guys, she says. Some have had mothers or wives who've lost their breasts to cancer.
"Of course, insurance will take them off but not put them back," Tesha said.
She earned her first pair three years ago—one of 400 the website has cut a check for since launching in 2005. You might say boob jobs are a family tradition, like sewing or knitting. Her mother, her grandmother and cousins are all artificially chesty.
"You just kinda feel left out if you don't," Tesha says. "If anybody says it's just for their self, they're lying."
She had grander ambitions than mere self-improvement. She'd been a Jacksonville Jaguars cheerleader and Playboy Cybergirl—winning a monthly contest where one lucky lady out of thousands is featured on the magazine's website. But Tesha wanted to become an honest-to-God Playboy model.
So she Googled implants and stumbled onto Myfreeimplants.com. It took nearly six months to charm enough money out of benefactors to pay for the procedure. To really work the system, she had to make the website a part-time job. If you're doing it right, you're logged on as much as 20 hours a week, promptly responding to donations and messages, updating your personal blog with banality like "Now I'm cooking dinner." Don't respond promptly and some discriminating benefactors yank their contributions.
"It's kind of like a pen pal with money," Tesha says.
She posted provocative images of herself in bathing suits, lingerie, even regular clothes. No nudie shots, though. Her husband Toast, a stunt biker, won't allow it.
Myfreeimplants.com sent the $5,000 check directly to the plastic surgeon.
Six months later she became pregnant. Then she discovered problems with her implants. Excess scar tissue formed around them, making the implants feel hard, pressed upon and uncomfortable. Still, Tesha's career was blossoming.
Maxim featured her in a stereotypical barn setup in 2006. She was a model for Budweiser, Miller and Lowrider. She steamed it up in a Harley Davidson commercial and was a runner-up in the Hooters International competition in Las Vegas.
But she was also mother to a child with severe hemophilia. Even a light slap to the boy's arm would cause him to bleed. Now 2-and-a-half years old, he has a catheter linked to his heart and requires four vials of medicine a day at $1,250 a pop.
She also bought a fly-by-night show car restoration company that was wracked with controversy. In 2007, she'd been an assistant to owner Mike Nezer, and posed in a few calendars for him. But he went belly-up after shoddy work combined with a zero recompense policy made for a deeply dissatisfied customer base. Muscle car enthusiasts, including country singer Jo Dee Messina, were stuck with unfinished hot rods that, in Messina's case, couldn't even be driven off of the premises.
Needless to say, Tesha's scar-tissue stuffed breasts were low on her to-do list.
But now she's been back on the site, shilling on behalf of her damaged boob job. Donors have dropped a grand into her fund, but the quest for free breasts goes slower these days due to the recession.
Still, the Internet will always be populated by middle-aged guys, faces washed with the glow of a laptop screen, whose idea of economic stimulus is a pair of artificially enhanced mammary glands.
Email bhargrove@nashvillescene.com, or call 615-844-9403.
