WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

So, two and a half years without breasts and I’m ready to concede that I might have another decade or three claiming a place on this rather overloaded planet and thinking that’s a long time to be without the orbs of feminity. Too bad that my hair won’t grow back like it used to be and I have opted for the punk staccato meant for the woman of my age who has either given up or wants to roar -visually. Or just be cooler – literally. I need something to make me feel gracious again.

Everyone jokes about what happens to our milkbags after they have done service. A man once wrote that women over 50  ‘do that terrible thing (sic) and cut their hair short’. Well fuck off dude, what do you know? Take you nazi follicularism (er….) and fuck off. Hope you go bald – that ‘terrible’ affliction of men over 50 and often much younger. And man-boobs can droop too.

Anyway, I meant to control my tongue and my hot temper for this blog and muse on the subject of women judging women. Last week, I had my appointment with the plastic surgeon who will, if I am brave enough, cut open my well-healed scar all over again and place small plastic bags where my breasts used to be.  For the next 2 months after that, I will visit the nurse who will use a magnetically attracted syringe to find the hole through which to pump a little more saline solution each time, to stretch my skin. I don’t have enough body fat to use my own tissue, which is the only time I will be disappointed about that fact. Then, when the optimum size is reached, I will have silicon implants. Followed 3 months later by reconstructed nipples. Then have them tattooed.

I force myself to write this. I am embarrassed, disgusted, intrigued, excited, terrified, anxious. Desperate to be ‘normal’ again.

While I was waiting to go in, a girl of maybe 18-20 appeared with her mother. She got up on the scales that stand at the side of the waiting room. I look up, distracted and do a double take as I notice her shorts, which barely skim her buttocks. Honestly, my knickers were larger than those shorts. She sits down and loudly proclaims her weight. Her mother reaches out and tucks a strand of blonded hair behind her daughter’s ear and murmers encouragingly. I wonder why they are here?

I have my face time with the lovely man who radiates clarity and makes me feel very confident. I cry a little when he shows me faceless pictures of his work on a woman of my body type. I can’t believe it looks so good! I tell him I didn’t want to be a bride of Frankenstein.  OMG, I’m on the waiting list. 3-6 months and I could get a call anytime telling me they have a space next week. And I don’t have to pay a cent. I am so lucky.

As I am getting weighed (out the back) and blood pressured, the young girl and her mother enter the same room I have just left. Whoa! Either she or her mother have been unfortunate to have had breast cancer – or the young girl wants implants. To make her perfectly healthy breasts as large as her shorts are short? The thought appalls me, embarrasses me, disgusts me etc. etc. I remember how proud I was back in the day when I had a fair pair of homegrown tits, all my own work.

But how many women haven’t fantasized about fuller, rejuvenated boobs? Age and service history doesn’t really have anything to do with it anymore. I believe there are girls out there who haven’t even developed yet, who have the promise of breast enhancements when they are legally old enough! I marvel at their confidence, at their determination, at the fact they don’t care whether they look as good as they can naturally or not. I feel like a macramé making garlic stinky 70’s hippy feminist. Who gives a shit if your body is au naturale or hand crafted these days? Did anyone ever care much?

Well I’m now straddling the two camps. Allowed as I am now to take the plastic option, I can embark on something I ‘knew’ I would never do. And yet I will always mourn the loss of what nature gave me. You just never know do you, the decisions you may be asked to make? You never know until it is happening to you.  Who the fuck am I to judge Ms Shorts? Go for your life.