I got a breast reduction when I was seventeen years old. While all of my friends were jetting off to the beach on vacation, I was being put under general anesthesia and my mother was signing waivers agreeing to the procedure.
Let me rewind. When puberty hit, my scrawny body suddenly had an hourglass shape to it and my flat chest skipped over the A’s and B’s and landed at a 34C. Fast-forward a few years, and by fourteen, that 34C became a 36DDD. I was not ashamed of my body and carried on about my business as usual. It was not long, however, before I began getting lectures about “dressing provocatively.” Older women in my church would pull me into the stairwell to have conversations about “distracting the boys in the youth group with [my] body.” I was apparently now responsible for controlling the morality of the male population surrounding me. So, my necklines got higher and I stopped wearing the peasant tops that were the epitome of fashion at the time.
At sixteen years old, I began having back and shoulder problems because of my breasts. It hurt to straighten my back, so I constantly slumped over. I would get giant knots in my shoulders that would bring me to tears because of the weight that I was carrying on my chest. The final straw was after a family member had to have her collarbone re-broken because the size of her breasts caused an injury to heal improperly. So I went on my first visit with my mom to a plastic surgeon in Charlotte, NC.
Three months later and we are back to where my story began. I was finally ready for the surgery that would definitely change my life. I haven’t told many people this story, and with good reason. I came back from that spring break and made the choice to tell my classmates that the reason I was wearing a giant sweatshirt and moving slow was because I had injured my shoulder the night before. I had mentally prepared myself for a lifetime of stigma surrounding plastic surgery, but at seventeen, I wasn’t ready to deal with it. I still don’t feel up to it most days. It kills me every time someone goes off on a tangent about plastic surgery and makes it sound like the result of anti-feminism. I have heard it all. “It is all about vanity,” or, “Oh yeah, I have heard that before about ‘medical necessity.’ Sure it was.” Or, my personal favorite that I heard a couple of weeks ago, “It’s horrible that you were so ashamed of your body that you did that.”
Fifteen pounds. That is how much non-fatty tissue the doctor removed from my chest. If you want to understand what it felt like before my surgery, put a few textbooks in a backpack and then place it on your chest when you are lying down. I know this article will shock a lot of you. To those of you that made comments to me about how plastic surgery ruins the body that God gave you: I forgive you. To those of you who are ashamed of something that has made you live more authentically: I have been in your position; you just worry about your happiness and ignore the haters. Finally, to my friend from high school who wondered why I burst out sobbing after she hugged me really hard during our junior year: Now you know my secret. Now all of you know my secret.
So no, I am not ashamed of my scars that run from one armpit to the other. I am not worried that my future partner will be disgusted by my choice to have my breasts reduced. I am not ashamed of my plastic surgery.
