I’ve been thinking a lot about Angelina Jolie’s boobs lately, probably because I’m in Michigan, hanging out with my genetic counselor sister-in-law.
My sister-in-law agrees with Angelina’s doctor, who said that BRCA1, the gene Angelina says she carries, gave her an 87% chance of developing breast cancer. So the preventive double mastectomy Angelina chose to have could save her life.
We are taught to treat mastectomies as a tragedy. I once even read an article that praised French women who said they’d rather die than lose their boobs!
But I totally disagree. I think that breasts are unnecessarily sacred.
I’m a 34DD/E so I have huge fat bags hanging off the front of my torso. Even with the best sports bra I can find, I can barely run. Really, besides trying to be sexy or feeding a baby, for many of us boobs just get in the way.
When my friend’s mother had a full mastectomy and got breast implants, this same attitude of great tragedy and the need to recapture what was lost was demonstrated by her doctors. They encouraged her to get her nipples re-tattooed on her boobs because, as happens in many cases, they couldn’t save her actual nipples.
What a limiting, lazy, boring suggestion! Why should she be expected to mourn her nipples? Sure, some people may feel that way. But why would a doctor push a patient in that depressing direction?
Instead of encouraging her to focus on a feeling of loss, they could show her the incredible number of new options available to her because she’s going to live.
The least of these options is being able to put anything she wants in the place where her nipples used to be. Seriously, what an amazing opportunity for self-expression!
Since I and many of my friends expect to get a mastectomy some day, I’ve been exploring more interesting, exciting alternatives to nipple tattoos.
My first thought, because I like things that make the onlooker question what’s going on, was theatrical happy face/sad face tattoos like these.
You’d never be a forgettable one-night-stand with these babies.
A friend of mine wants Batman Symbols:
How could you ever NOT feel cool with these symbols protruding from you chest?
Or how about a burger and fries?
Of course, you could skip the permanent tattoo all together and get temporary ones. Then you could change the tattoo to reflect different moods or situations.
Regardless of what one chooses, I believe mastectomies should be recognized as the life-affirming occasion for celebration that they are, and all this mourning for the loss of an overly prized part of the body should end.
