Goodbye, breast implants: why I went back to having a flat chest

For 22 years, I ran around with small bags of saline water on my chest – a fact I shared with only a handful of close friends. I felt ashamed of having chosen artificial enhancement.

I’m an outdoorsy mountain runner. At 56, I want to model ageing naturally, but having breast implants ran counter to that. Now they are gone, thanks to explant surgery – implant removal without replacement.

I decided to speak openly about going flat-chested so more women who face implant removal or mastectomy might consider staying flat.

Like other women I spoke with who later had their breast implants removed, I originally got mine to fit a nearly impossible beauty standard: a thin body with round, fuller breasts.

My little A-cups had risen to the occasion to nurse my two babies from 1998 through 2002. They literally vanished after weaning, as if my body absorbed every cell of breast tissue. I became flatter than my husband. My fit physique developed a masculine chest that made me view my body as tough and unappealing as beef jerky.

I had been conditioned early in life, both by our culture and by parents who casually commented on “good tits”, to value the appearance of well-shaped breasts in order to please men. My mom used to test the quality of her breasts by placing a pencil under them to see if the pencil would fall or if it got stuck from the sagging. My dad used to keep his spare change in a ceramic mug shaped like a woman’s large, naked upturned breast.

It’s no wonder that after puberty hit, I padded my bras and worried about my small chest.

At age 34, I was going through a period of low self-confidence as a stay-at-home mom with a shelved career, and I