Histori Personale

The unique female case of breast reduction, tells Melissa Febos herself through her book

The unique female case of breast reduction, tells Melissa Febos herself through

Melissa Febos, author of Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, tells how she made the decision to undergo a breast reduction. She shares in her personal essay, published in The New York Times Magazine, how she spent most of her life, from the time she was 11 years old, desperately wanting her body to be different, but felt in that obsession that she was failing as a feminist.

"I thought I had to accept my body, love my body and find it beautiful, successfully reject the inner messages of patriarchal culture," she said.

Initially Febos confesses that she was only 12 years old when she started noticing that her breasts were growing but at the same time she realized that she was hindering her both physically and in society. Not only did he have to deal with the physical discomfort that every girl's breasts bring at that age as he begins to grow, but he also faced unwanted social attention from the boys who sexualized him and the girls who embarrassed him. Only in her mid-30s did Febos make peace with her feminism and perceptions between medical and cosmetic surgery:

"One day, I just asked myself, 'Would I do it if I did not have to explain myself to someone?' The answer was a resounding yes. Did I really believe it would improve my life? I knew for sure it would be. I had considered the operation as impossible for so long, I surrendered to tolerate the worries. It took me a long time to change that way of thinking, though I decided instantly: I no longer had to live with it. It suddenly seemed absurd to me that I had tolerated the imaginary opinions of hypothetical people on my daily ease and happiness, ”she further describes the decision to perform aesthetic intervention to reduce her breasts.

Melissa Febos is the author of the recently published book "Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative" as well as the collection of essays "Girlhood", which won a National Book Critics Circle Award.