Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Articles

Well over 43,000 breast reductions were done last year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. While that number is small in comparison to the nearly 314,000 women who underwent breast augmentation surgery last year, it still represents a significant number of women who improved their quality of life.

Cosmetic breast surgery, an umbrella term that includes augmentation, lifts, and reductions, has long suffered from an image problem. The women who underwent the procedures were often held up as examples of everything that was wrong with plastic surgery during an era when it was stigmatized for its glorification of artificiality and excess.

As the stigma was shed, the perception softened. But it hasn’t completely gone away. Casting judgment ignores the deeply personal and nuanced stories that inspire tens of thousands of women to undergo cosmetic breast surgery each year, many of whom have suffered in silence for much of their lives.

For a moment, envision yourself as a fifth-grade girl who, from the first day of school this year has stopped being called by her name. Instead, you’re known now to classmates and strangers alike as “The Girl with the Big Boobs.” It’s a burden you’ll carry with you through your formative years.

As you enter your mid-twenties and your friends begin to settle down and talk about starting families, your thoughts center on breast reduction surgery. Exhausted by the countless inconveniences, like buying a two-piece bathing suit or doing any kind of cardiovascular exercise, not to mention the crippling lower back pain that’s intensifying by the week, you begin to consult with plastic surgeons.

In time you discover an especially compassionate surgeon who meets your qualifications and understands what you’re looking for and how you’re feeling.  In preparation, you’ll explain that you exercise three to four times a week in spite of waking every morning with back pain. Your posture is terrible, you know that, but sitting up straight is too taxing.

A few months after your surgery, your recovery behind you, you’ll catch yourself in a mirror and realize you love being naked. And almost immediately, it’ll occur to you that you can’t remember ever having felt that. In fact, for as far back as your memory will take you, the only sensation you can remember is that your body doesn’t feel like it belongs to you. But now you know it does.

This story about a ‘mommy makeover’ is likely familiar to you on some level.

Even when she takes into consideration all the ground she’s covered (and respect she’s come to command) through the first 15 years of her career, a woman—let’s name her Grace—considers herself an athlete foremost. She rises at 5 a.m. most mornings to get 10 miles in, and she’s meticulous about her diet.

At 35, she has her first child and gains 40 pounds during the pregnancy, but they come off in mere months postpartum with the help of a jogging stroller. A couple years later, Grace becomes pregnant again. This time, her recovery is far more challenging. A prolonged postnatal hospital stay, which included recovery from a C-section and a series of life-threatening complications, left her depleted.

Even once Grace made it home, caring for her second infant, who nurses constantly, absorbs much more of her time, to the extent that she abandons running.

She still manages to drop 25 pounds in fairly short order, but with her abdominal muscles forced apart, she still appears second-trimester pregnant. With 40 staring back from the horizon, Grace’s previously elastic body wasn’t snapping back into place the way it once had.

The “mommy makeover” is often perceived as an act of vanity, even by many of the women who pursue it.

But for Grace, it was an attempt at empowerment. As she was, Grace was struggling to be the mother she expected to be. Before children, the woman she saw in the mirror was fearless. But Grace, the mother, couldn’t even take her toddlers to the park without persistent anxiety over concealing her body.

To her young kids, everything was new and thrilling. But Grace was too distracted by her fellow moms to indulge in that joy. She felt like a failure because her body had morphed into something completely foreign to her, and she couldn’t seem to get out of her own way as a result.

The mommy makeover isn’t a single surgery that reconstructs the body. Rather, with the help of a board-certified plastic surgeon, a woman can customize a series of operations specific to her needs. Nearly always it includes a breast augmentation and a lift, as well as a tummy tuck, a surgical procedure designed to eliminate the loose skin and excess fat apparent after childbirth.

The mommy makeover is a big undertaking for a woman and, really, her entire family. Recovery from abdominal surgery can’t be rushed, which means finding help with childcare and asking a partner to absorb more than their fair share of domestic duties.

The reward that makes enduring that worth it? Reclaiming yourself, and becoming a fearless, fun mom in the process.