Ashley, a.k.a. Minxie, trades photos for donations to her next implant procedure.
Appropriately enough, his eureka moment came in Las Vegas, at a bachelor party, in the company of strippers.
One of the strippers had recently gotten breast implants. Another was sad because she could not afford them. So Grunstra did what any gentlemen would do — he started raising cash for the flat-chested one.
"I said, 'I've got five on it!'" he recalls. "And everybody else said, 'I've got five on it, too.' By the end of the night we had $70 bucks."
That's a long way from the cost of a breast implant operation, which can run $4,000 and up. But for Grunstra, this was more than just crumpled dollar bills stuffed in a thong. This was a big idea.
Thus the concept of "MyFreeImplants.com" was born, and it stayed with Grunstra even after he returned home from Las Vegas and sobered up. The idea was simple: Set up a Web site to raise money for women who want breast implants. The women pose for photographs on the site, and so-called benefactors pay for the right to look — and to "interact," as Grunstra puts it, via email and blog posts.
Just two years later, Grunstra claims the site has over 10,000 benefactors and one thousand women competing for their attention and their dollars. He says 28 women have already made their goal and are featured prominently on the site in before and after photos.
Benefactors create profiles and buy message credits at $1.25 a pop, which allows them to send messages to women they see on the site. A dollar goes toward the women's goal; 25 cents goes to Grunstra and the site. Grunstra says the site has more than 5 million page-views a month, brings in $1,000 a day, and generates a monthly profit of about $3,000.
Not surprisingly, the site has drawn plenty of criticism. One blogger compared it to prostitution "but without the freedom provided by the money the women earn."
In fact, the money does not go directly to the women, but Grunstra says that's to avoid fraud. "We pay the doctors directly," he says. "The girls never touch the money. They could never take it on a shopping spree. We make sure that we are paying for the implants and nothing else."
A dancer in Las Vegas inspired Jason Grunstra to create myfreeimplants.com.
That's fine with 23-year-old Ashley, a Californian who goes by the name Minxie on MyFreeImplants.com. Ashley has already had an implant operation but wants to go bigger.
"It's just that I've been small my whole life. I've always wanted them. I've always wanted to have big ones," she says.
She is a bright, athletic young woman, not someone easily dismissed as a stereotypical bimbo pushing to be so top-heavy that she will become little more than the sum of her breasts.
Ashley hasn't gone as far as other women on the site who have auctioned bras, panties and other articles of clothing, but she does send nude pictures to her benefactors. She says a $50 donation will get you something topless, maybe in a schoolgirl outfit; $100 will get you a full nude, not something raunchy, she adds.
How many has she sent out? "Um, quite a few," she says. "Maybe 200."
Ashley's photos are tame compared to some of the others on the site, but Grunstra insists that My Free Implants is not about pornography. Rather, he says, "It's a service for meeting other people with similar interests."
Breasts?
"Right."
Grunstra also rejects the criticism that his site in any way resembles prostitution. Benefactors and implant-hopefuls aren't allowed to trade personal information or to use the site to meet offline.
Still, Ashley says that one of her benefactors managed to find her page on MySpace. After that she switched to her "Minxie" alias on the MyFreeImplants site.
Some of the benefactors "are really nice but lonely," she says. She admits to having her moments of sympathy for them. When one told her he didn't know how to cook, she taught him how to cook a steak — online, that is.
But a lot of the men are creeps, she says. "It's a business thing for me. I mean, I hate to feel that way. Because I know some of these guys are thinking I'm their friend," she says. "I'm not really a fake person, so it's kind of a challenge for me. But at the same time, you know, you got to make the money."
Ashley estimates that it takes 100 hours of online chatting and emailing with her benefactors to raise $1,000. That's not a whole lot better than minimum wage. Nevertheless, she says it's worth it. "I mean a picture, it's just a picture," she says. "You know what I mean?"
Jason Grunstra also thinks My Free Implants is worth it, although his girlfriend disagrees. "She thinks it's setting [women] back 50 years," he says.
Producer: Erin Green
Video Editor: Tommy Morquecho
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