I am pretty open when it comes to getting breast lifts or implants. However today I want to talk about a couple of things that you should seriously think about if you are seriously considering getting breast surgery.
Have you tried wearing a perfectly fitted bra?
Several women wrote to me and said that after discovering my blog they did not need or want breast surgery any more. Finally wearing a bra that fitted them perfectly not only relieved them of shoulder and back pain, but made clothes fit better and their figure look more proportional. When the breasts stopped being a source of discomfort and frustration, most women felt that their feelings towards their breasts changed, and they began to accept and even like them. It also helped to realise that their bra size was normal. Previously regular lingerie stores that didn't carry their size made them feel like mutants (if you have trouble understanding this, imagine you needed a shoe size than no shoe store in your town carries).
Since roughly 80% of women wear the wrong size, chances that you, dear reader (especially if you have just stumbled onto this blog) are not wearing a perfectly fitting bra, are pretty high. To see all the basics on bra fitting, check out the Bra Matrix tab on top of the page. Chances are that issues like back pain will go away once you try a bra that does it's job.
How do you feel about your body, in general?
Consider these two real scenarios for a moment:
Scenario one: a woman is unhappy about her belly fat, she feels ugly. She decides to lose weight and work out, and after months of hard work she loses most of the excess fat and has a trim athletic figure. However instead of being happy about her body and celebrating her success, she now obsesses about the cellulite on her thighs. She feels ugly and unhappy. This is a common scenario. It's also the reason why people get "addicted" to plastic surgery, always wanting to get the next thing "done". They dislike their body and don't feel happy in it, and at the root of this usually are deeper issues. This hate and unhappiness gets focused on one body part, so when this body part is "fixed" but the deeper issues remain unresolved, the hate just finds a new scapegoat.
Second scenario: in the book Psycho Cybernetics, the cosmetic surgeon Maxwell Malz was really bewildered by this: many of his patients got plastic surgery to fix scars and other physical flaws, yet after the surgery they complained that the didn't look any different. They still felt as ugly and disfigured as they felt before. Malz realised that although their exterior was improved, their self-image remained the same. And this self image was so powerful that even a dramatic cosmetic surgery could not change it. (The book is amazing, everyone should absolutely read it).
If you feel that you have strong issues about body image, you should really consider seeing a professional about it -- even if you do plan on going through with the breast enhancement (or other cosmetic surgery). At least it will help you get the best out of your surgery.
It might seem to us that if only our body way X instead of Y we'd feel beautiful and happy, but in practice fixing the body part will not change our ingrained attitude towards our body.
Finding correctly fitting bras after surgery can be a challenge
This is something a lot of women don't realise before getting them. Of course there are tons of different kinds of breasts procedures out there, but especially implants make it more difficult to find a correctly fitting bra. There seem to be a lot of "bra for women with implants" companies popping up, however in practice it's not so simple. Implants can be so different and there is no one fits-all-implants bra style out there. Secondly the size range of such companies is usually very limited.
Obviously in the big scheme of things bra shopping might not be your biggest problem, but in case a big reason for getting a boob job is: "I can just waltz into any lingerie store and buy cure bras", it might not work like that.
Obviously in the big scheme of things bra shopping might not be your biggest problem, but in case a big reason for getting a boob job is: "I can just waltz into any lingerie store and buy cure bras", it might not work like that.
I mean to write a couple of posts about bra fitting for implants. Stay tuned!