Sarah's operation was first thing the next morning, but I still didn't feel ready. I'd thought long and hard about her decision, but I just couldn't be sure it was the right thing. It seemed so drastic. Having your boobs cut open and their insides gutted like a Newfie codfish.
Wasn't this against everything feminism had taught me? We're supposed to be learning to love our bodies, dealing with whatever we've been dealt. So Sarah had big boobs. She just needed to learn to accept them, to recognize and reclaim their power. How could I let her have them lopped in half?
When I first met Sarah, her boobs, as usual, were the centre of attention. When she told me she was planning to have a breast reduction, I, like so many before me, felt the urgent need to set her straight. Armed with my assumptions, I decided she must be really insecure about her body. Obviously she's superficial, obsessed and, being the good-bra advocate that I am, I was sure most of her problems could be solved with the right cup. After all, her boobs didn't seem that big.
But Sarah's boobs had always encouraged strong, mostly unsolicited, opinions. "Nice big gazongas!" is foremost in her mind amid the enlightened commentary she has received. It's an odd thing with breasts. Once they're a certain size, they become public property and total strangers feel perfectly okay about letting you know what they think of them. After a while, they take on a life of their own, and the person attached to them is left playing second fiddle. In fact, Sarah would often find people engrossed exclusively in conversation with them. "Uh, excuse me. Hello! I'm up here.
"I was my boobs," Sarah told me. "I know they weren't that enormous, but the way I felt inside was that they were the only thing people would see. There was this obsession with my breasts and my cleavage.
"It's not a disability but it can be very disabling," she said.
Especially when you want to run and play like all the other kids. "When I tried to do aerobics, I'd stop jumping, and they'd still be moving."
In fact, beyond all the undesirable attention, the physical problems associated with large breasts are numerous. Plastic surgeon E. Patricia Egerszegi says neck pain, back pain, bra straps digging into women's shoulders, trouble running, headaches, and difficulty finding clothes that fit, are among the complaints she hears. One large-breasted friend of mine can attest to the last problem. When she was growing up and out, her mother used to switch swimsuit tops and bottoms when the sales person wasn't looking.
But determining whether a woman is doing this for the right reasons can be a tough call, Dr Egerszegi admits. "You don't want to do them for the wrong reasons. You don't want them to think this is going to solve their job situation or save their marriage," she told me.
In fact, Sarah first approached her GP about having a reduction five years ago, but her doctor discouraged her. "She felt like I was doing it because I didn't like my body enough."
Five years and much thought and harassment later, Sarah still wanted to do it. She had heard nothing but positive feedback from women who had had reductions. In fact, her biggest opponents were flat-chested women and men who were into big boobs. Mammary-challenged women would tell her how lucky she was and that she was crazy to do this. "I'd tell them, 'Strap two cantaloupes to your chest and go around like that for 30 years.'" As for the men, Sarah told me, "It was a sexual thing, it didn't make me a nicer person." As TV's Roseanne, herself a breast-reductee, put it, "If guys were really more interested in our minds they'd have as many names for them and they'd be having Wet Hat contests in all those bars."
