It seems that, while breast implants are the number one cosmetic surgery among women, breast lifts have been gaining popularity, by as much as 70%, since 2000. The plastic surgeons say to try “the pencil test” to see if you might be a good candidate. Since I could keep a calligraphy set secure, I’m sure the doctors would tell me my time has come.
When I was 30, before I had even had a baby, I started to worry about my boobs. Not to say I was unhappy, but I noticed a change and doctors always say, if you notice a change then bring ‘em in. So I did. I saw Dr. (I kid you not) Buble (pronounced Boo-Blay, like the singer). She was incredibly patient with me as I described a sudden change in consistency and look. “Should I be worried?” I asked. No, she told me. The “deflation” that I had noticed was in fact just me, and my boobs, getting older. Deflation indeed.
When I was first pregnant I took a close friend out to brunch to surprise her with the news. When I could stand the suspense no more, I gave her the scoop and she said, “Obviously, just look at your boobs.” She was right, overnight I had gone from deflated to zeppelin. I was at a painful D cup, and had to sleep in my bra every night. After I had my daughter things became positively cartoonish. But once I stopped nursing, I returned to my natural over-fed flapjack state.
Boobs are essentially the canary in our hormonal coalmine. As we gestate babies, lose or gain weight, nurse or wean children, our breasts mirror our health and our age. That is to say, they, like our lives, are constantly changing. Sure, we could get implants, but if you aren’t willing to eat non-organic kale, do you really want to have plastic bags of saline imbedded in your body forever (or until they reach the end of their lifespan and have to be replaced, lucky you!)? Or do you want to join the ever-increasing number of women getting breast lifts, putting things back where they started, rolling the old rock back up that mountain just so it has a slightly longer way to fall? Surgery, no matter how elective or “minor,” sucks. Morphine is not at all as fun as it sounds, unless you are into bile.
Let’s just think of it this way, your breasts are constantly changing, what if in ten years they shrink up to nothing and you can wear strapless dresses without having to hike them up every five minutes? Or what if in twenty years they become Dolly Parton huge and you become the favorite grandma because all the babies want to nap on your pillowy bosom? Why, as women, does the bottom line of every conversation we have about our physical appearance end with: Can we love ourselves the way we are? Are we really going to lift every sag, botox every wrinkle, dye every gray? When will it stop? This tide is coming in no matter what we do. Fighting the ocean is a bad idea, every swimmer knows that. Plus, all we have to do is look to Hollywood to see cautionary tales of self-rejection and the way the work to look younger actually makes women look older and not at all like themselves. At the end of the day I want to look like myself. My deflated, over-ripe self. But ask me again in twenty years.