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Eluding the Booby Trap
by Michele Forsten
The other day, my friend
called to tell me that his middle-aged sister's breasts
were suddenly larger than they used to be and nestled
in her bikini top at a gravity-defying angle. What
shocked me was when he added that her 25-year-old
daughter -- his niece -- also had had her breasts
enlarged.
I can better understand
my friend's sister's decision to alter her breasts--to
counter physical signs of aging, provide an illusory
hedge against mortality--than I can her daughter's
actions. When I was the daughter's age, back in the
late '70s, the only women who had their breasts enlarged,
or so it seemed to me, were models and movie stars.
Being well-endowed in the mammary department had its
drawbacks in real life. My full-breasted friends talked
about having back problems and being harassed by men
on the street who thought their ample chests were
an invitation for sleazy comments. Glad to be an "A-Cupper,"
I didn't have a desire to be more voluptuous, nor
did any of my flat-chested friends, for that matter.
But, then again, I hung around Lesbians. We accepted what we were given in the mammary gland department - large or small - and made the most of it. We knew there
wasn't a correlation between breast mass and breast sensation; nipples got erect whether they were the apex of gentle rises or major mountains.
Things are different now, at least for straight women. Peg it to the bull market or the cooling of the controversy over the safety of silicone implants, today
it's your average young straight woman and her mother who are going under the knife. A New York Times article stated that during 1999, more than 120,000 American women, "many of them
in their teens and early 20s, are expected to give breast implants a try."
It's not as though I don't do stuff to improve my appearance, like pluck wayward eyebrow hairs. This superficial kowtowing to our society's vision of beauty,
however, does not carry the possible repercussions of breast "enhancement": painful scar tissue, the unnatural feel of the enlarged breast, loss of sexual sensation, infections,
the need for additional surgery, leaking silicone, etc.
Looking deeper into what
was really bothering me about young women having breast
augmentation surgery, I realized that the courting
of potential health problems and the vanity of it
all merely scratched the surface. At the core was
why women like my friend's niece, with so much of
their lives ahead of them, would elect to "deform"
their body when other women - including my mother
- are radically and brutally scarred by breast surgery
they didn't want to have.
In 1972, my 42-year-old mother had a mastectomy and opted not to have reconstructive surgery. Where the fullness and smoothness of her breast once was, there was
flatness, broken by a long, thick angry scar. The skin surrounding the scar was taut and thin, with the outlines of her ribs visible. The plateau became a shallow concave bowl near her
armpit, where her lymph nodes had been scooped out. Four years later, she died from the cancer that had metastasized. During the last days of her life, I remember rubbing Alpha-Keri
lotion into the area where her breast had been, feeling some compassion but much revulsion in seeing her chest so ravaged by the cancer war she was about to lose.
Trees have rings that reveal
their age; I have visible marks that tell the story
of the six surgeries (some to remove more than one
growth - all, so far, benign) that I've undergone
since 1970 when I was 16 years old. Scars are etched
around both of my nipples and faded incisions line
the surface of other parts of my breasts.
In the late '80s, with
several of these surgeries behind me and another looming,
I went for a second opinion. The doctor asked, "Have
you thought of having prophylactic mastectomies? You're
at high risk. Why take a chance?" His flippancy
about taking such a radical step that was, at best,
of questionable value, horrified me. Why would I want
to protect myself from a disease I might never contract?
It was analogous to deciding to commit suicide now
because eventually I'm going to die.
Recently, my longtime breast doctor commented that my breasts seemed less dense and thus easier to examine. This was the nice, medical way of saying that at the
age of 45, they have started to sag. Instead of getting depressed and starting to research plastic surgeons, I was elated by the news. Breast exams will be easier and I'll get more
accurate mammogram readings.
I've lived long enough to understand that happiness is much longer lasting if it is achieved by developing self-love rather than one's chest. It will take a
couple of decades for my nipples to reach the vicinity of my bellybutton. If I live that long and still have my breasts, I think I'll throw a big party to celebrate their reaching bottom.
And if I live into my 70s, in decent health, and don't have one or both breasts, I'll celebrate being a crone, hopefully surrounded by people I love. Are there any other "gravity
embracers" out there who might want to celebrate with me?
© Michele Forsten 2000
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