Do you think breast reductions are anti feminist?
What does anti-feminist mean? On this blog feminism is understood as a short hand for women’s liberation, so rephrased your question would be “do you think breast reductions are setting women’s liberation back/hindering women’s liberation/antithetical to women’s liberation?” Short answer, yes.
Breast reductions are heavy surgeries that require plenty of money (to find a good surgeon, to afford the costs of the operation itself, and then to afford the time off that is needed to recuperate). As all surgeries, they come with plenty of possible complications, from pain and loss of sensation to death, if something goes really wrong. As such, breast reduction should never be considered lightly. Getting one means putting yourself directly at risk of physical harm. Moreover, breast reductions fall into the category of cosmetic surgery, which is nothing if profiteering from women’s self-hatred, enforcing unattainable standards of appearances, and lining men’s pockets.
So why would a woman get a breast reduction? I’d guess either because of pain, because of practicality, because of appearance, or because of attention. Of pain I can speak little, despite having big breasts, because I’ve never suffered back pain because of my breasts themselves. I have suffered from back pain because of bras, and because of faulty posture, and because of lack of muscular strength. I think abandoning bras and strengthening yourself and your back muscles is looked at too little in this case. In most case it would probably be enough (though to reach the enough part you’d have to commit to work and sweat), but I acknowledge that for a few women, their breasts are not proportional to their frame. Even with a good posture and strength, sustaining breasts that heavy would be a struggle, and then it becomes a medical condition. I don’t think most cases fit that tho.
Of practicality, I think big breasts become a hassle quite fast. They. Just. Get. In. The. Way. Of. Everything. Either you accept it, or you don’t, and if you don’t your logical move is to get rid of it. You accept it by realising how unrealistic the images sold to us in the media and the expectation that are placed on us are, by understanding that as big-breasted women our bodies move and react differently than what we see everywhere in the media (because we overwhelmingly see small-chested women, so what is normalised is absolutely not our norm), by stopping to try to fit those small-chested narratives. You accept that they will jiggle and that yes you have to hold them when you move fast and that if you bend over they’ll get into your face as if they have a life of their own. The concern of practicality is a refusal to accept your body as it is and the desire to make things “easier” for you by making it less hard to fit the mainstream mould.
Of appearance, little needs to be said, other than that the standard of beauty is non-saggy, perky, with the same size to each breast and breasts that are not too small but also not too big. None of it is realistic, it is of course laced with misogyny, and trying to fit that is a disservice if not self-harm.
Of attention - here misogyny strikes overtly again - because many girls and women are bullied and harassed for having large breasts. Of course the first reaction is to want to do something so the harassment stops. Reducing the breasts might seems like a solution, but it merely consists in diverting the misogyny somewhere else (the misogyny never sleeps). We should not let men dictate how we live with our bodies; they should not make us terrified of existing in our bodies and push us into cutting off parts of ourselves.
Breasts reductions don’t really solve your problems with your breasts. Back pain will come back if your posture doesn’t change. There’s always going to be something impractical about your own womanhood, something that doesn’t fit the standardised extolled experience, be it the texture of your hair or the tone of your skin or the length of your period (or for that matter how much you bleed or in how much pain you are). Finding faults is an endless experience. Once you start, there’s no stopping. If you go for a breast reduction because of appearance, what’s to stop you to alter more? What about your nose, your eyes, the fat in your hips, your wrinkles? Endless nitpicking will follow, and with no peace of mind to be reached. And men will keep being men, and as such trash, and as such harassers. They’ll find something else to comment on, something else to grope, and we’ll just feel as dead inside. And all of that if the surgery goes “well”.
I don’t think breast reduction is advancing our liberation, barring the extreme case when breast size is a medical condition. I don’t think focusing on breast reduction is of any help. There are many things we need to look at first before looking at that surgery like anything remotely useful. Understanding the misogynistic context that surround us, understanding our own feelings and reactions toward our breasts and how they are a reflection of the misogyny we internalised all our lives and of the injunctions we get from society, getting to know ourselves and our bodies and how they work and move without the fear and self-silencing we are so prone to. As much as we can, we should push back and try to act as if we were already liberated. We need to bring this world into existence. We can’t let men and their actions dictate what we feel about our bodies. Yes, men will harass us about our breasts, but that says less about our breasts and more about their misogyny. Fear can help us survive, but it also stifles us. I’m not saying it’s easy; it’s a daily struggle; but it gets easier. Getting a breast reduction is not the worst thing you can do for yourself in terms of liberation (though I would rank it as worse than wearing make-up for example) but it’s not doing anything to help either. So yes, not the feminist thing to do in my opinion.
So, while I would not throw the first stone at any woman with large breasts and back pain who thinks her breasts are too much to handle and who chooses to get a breast reduction, and having carefully considered if I myself would get one at some point, I believe a better solution lies in accepting your body as is, with its (sometimes) limitations. Our bodies aren’t all the same, so we are bound to have different experiences and we can’t all do the same thing. I’m not going to run up stairs without pain, and I’m never going to not have a boob gap when I wear shirts and I’m never not going to have very saggy breasts, but I’ve made my peace with that. I exist. I don’t try to contort myself into fashionable shapes, I make my own expectations and I make sure they fit my own personal circumstances. But I get how easier a breast reduction can seem given how they are sold to women.
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