The Appeal of the Smaller Breast
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spotify from the new york times. I'm Rachel labors and this is the daily.

For decades, rest augmentations have been one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in america, but in recent years, a new trend has started to emerge. The breast reduction today, my colleague, is similar on understanding the appeal of the smaller rest.

It's wednesday, november twenty years. Hi, lisa. Hi, right. So you recently read a story about something that I am prety sure we haven't covered on the daily before, and that topic is breast productions. And I really love to hear before we get into IT why you wrote about IT White interested deal.

sure. I work on the well desk at the new york times, and well is the area of the times that covers health and wellness, nutrition, fitness. I am particularly interested in the subject of women's bodies and how IT feels to be in a female body walking around in the world.

So those are the kinds of stories that I do. So my colleague, Stella bug b, who is the editor of the style desk, me these numbers one day. And the numbers were from the american society, plastic surgeons. And they showed this dramatic increase in retrospections over the last five years, driven by women under thirty. And SHE was just like, what do you think is going on here? So I just said about sort of expLoring both why the trend and also sort of what was in women's heads as they were making these decisions.

Can you tell us a little bit about those numbers specifically? What do they show and what were they?

So in twenty twenty three, which is the last year for which data are available, more than seventy six thousand women had breast reductions. And these are not surgeries that have to do with cancer, and they are not gender firming surgeries. These are surgeries that insurance companies deemed to be cosmetic.

And IT was just an astonishing jump from from free pandemic when the number was more like forty thousand. And you know, to be sure, the most popular cosmetics, breast surgery, in the country is breast augmentations. Still, these numbers are tiny in comparison to the numbers of women who are getting augmentations. Three hundred thousand about get in augmentation of a year. But those numbers are creeping downward, and the reduction numbers are going upward, not just among Young women, but among women in every age group.

No, it's unna. I feel like I to have noticed this trend towards smaller breast and popular culture. I can't really put my finger on IT exactly, but I feel like I walked into stores where you see dresses that you really can only wear if you have small breast, if feels like there are more models with small breast on the runway. And i've noticed a sort of an ic totally here and there, but I didn't realize that all that, that trend IT was actually something quantifiable and showing up in .

data somewhere totally. I mean, I was thinking about this before I came to record this session, and I was like, it's a little bit like learning a new word, and then you hear that word everywhere.

Yes, totally. So.

you know, I saw these numbers, and I was like him, and then I went out into the world. And like in bricklin, where I live, so many Young women are wearing like tank tops and chemicals without brows, slip dresses without brows. In a way where I went to report the story. I saw all these women wearing these smock dresses where you couldn't wear a bra.

and i'm well aware .

of the smog dress.

And and so IT just IT really did feel like IT was everywhere all at once.

And also, I mean, I just sort of runs counter to, I think, a lot of the imagery that like we've grown up with in terms of what was on television. Like there's a reason why breast augmentation ation surgery .

is got so big. I mean, you know, when I was growing up, being flat chested was a modification. Nobody wanted to be flat chested.

I remember this distinctly from high school. Everybody admired the girls with bigger bobs, the big girls with bigger boobs, like, showed off in the workroom. This was the eighties. And you know, that was the era of silicon m breasts and plants. That was the era of big model di part di parton.

I D be remiss if I didn't bring up puter, but I do. I do not feel like you could have .

launched IT was all desirable.

I mean, as one of the .

women I spoke to for the story said to me, like when you have big breasts, your winning. She's like that's what culture thinks about big breast. And when you go back, that goes back to post world war to volute witness, right? Like maryland on row leads into baywatch, leads into cda.

Ian, it's this kind of Austin tatius display of female ness. Big breasts meant power. They meant sex.

They meant motherhood. They were something that men wanted. And if you had them, you know, IT was money in .

the bank.

And so by the two thousand and tens, breast augmentation, which had gotten more and more and more sophisticated, the implants had gotten more and more and more natural looking, was the most popular cosmetic surgery in the country. Three hundred and fifty thousand women a year, we're getting a breasts augmentation. Everything you're saying.

I mean, all of our experiences, I think, add up to the idea that is not ground breaking to say that americans have been pretty obsessed with the female breasts, right?

No, not at all. It's not ground breaking. I mean, there's been this obsession with breasts in culture for no ever. But what surprised me, as I was doing the reporting, was the extent to which the subsection sion not only extended into the medical community, but actually originated with IT. I had a conversation with a plastic surgeon who was a woman, and he was telling me about this paper that was published in twenty eleven in a plastic surgery journal in which an english plastic surgeon describe bed, the controls of the ideal breasts and the .

ideal breath, ideal breast one.

I mean, and he used that language in the paper in this medical journal, and this text became foundational. IT became like a training test for generations of doctors. And in the introduction to the paper, he talks about how, you know, Leonardo to vince defined the controls of the ideal human face.

And he put this effort into that context, like he was helping the profession of plastic surgeons create an improve breasts for the world. He had this idea, but the ideal breast was sort of concave below the nipple and sort of flat above the net. So he was very specific in the shape of the ideal breasts.

But no one has breasts like this. No one has just like this. And yet the conventions around what a breast should look like are so strong and so established that when a woman walks into a plastic surgeons office and remember, you know, four fifth of them are men, SHE says, I want something smaller.

They say, well, your husband might not like that, or you should try losing some weight first. Or I like them render. And there's a whole reit thread where women tell these stories to each other about walking into plastic surgeons offices and asking for smaller rest. And that feedback they get makes them feel like what they're asking for is crazy. So obviously.

least of breast reduction, sounds like a very self evident term. But just for the sake of IT, can you walk us through what the surgery actually inhales?

Yes, sure. So the surgery usually involves, you know, making an incision around the nipple and then from the nipple down the length of the breast, the a curved part of the breast, and then removing a lot of rest tissue from inside the breast. I think that is really important to say here is that most of the women who go in for breast reduction have double d cups or bigger.

And these days the plastic surgeons told me, most women are asking for A B cup, whether five years ago they were running a sea. So they're asking for more rest issue to be removed. And, you know, Kelly clean, who was one of the surgeons I spoke to for my story, I was talking to her an office.

He was wearing her scrubs, and I was like, but how much breath tissue are we talking about actually? And SHE reached down and picked a coke can up out of her garbage can. And he was like, I just took this much breast tissue out of one breast in a patient.

Oh my god. You know it's a lot and so it's a much more invasive surgery than augmentation. And IT has all of these potential consequences that are enduring.

IT can affect a woman's ability to breast feed. They're not a great data on this, but the best study says about a third of the time, IT can affect nip sensation. And there's permanent scars that frequently go around the nipple, down the breast, under the breast. And the women are really making a big trade. You know, they're saying i'm willing to do all of these things in order for my breath to be smaller.

And so when they decide to make, as you said, that big trade and get the surgery anyway, but what is that end up costing them?

The american society of plastic surgeons says that cost about between seven and eight thousand dollars. I spoke to a lot of plastic surgeons for the story, and none of them charged that little. Most of them charge somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand, with the high and surgeons in new orange charging as much as twenty.

So it's a lot. And this is a surgery that can technically be covered by insurance. But the algorithms and formulas involved dark, extremely complex, and the bar is really high, and most women don't end up being covered.

And so what that means is that there are women with very large breasts who may be experiencing some to a lot of pain, who have to pay for this surgery out of pocket. And that is very frustrating to them and to their doctors. And the more I talk to the women, the more I understood that in every woman, there's some combination. When he walks into a surgeon office asking for this surgery of pain, discomfort and a desire to have a different shape body that is really different from what you had before.

We'll be .

right back.

Okay, i'm opening the new york times up the APP ads so much more than you might expect. The way the tabs at the .

top with all of the different .

sections is just easier .

and vigor that there is something for everyone.

When I open the youtube, I get a short list of articles that are more related to me.

Ten stories pick for you everyday .

to add sections that interest you. That's really handy.

There are some individuals in here. I can add paul crude, I like him.

the lifestyle tab. The photos are just phenomenal. It's kind of like a collage.

I know the games always scroll over to the games page.

player or connections, and then slide over to read today's headlights. There is an article next to recipe, next to games. And this is easy to get everything in one place before, you know, if you can be late to work. The new york times APP. All of the times, all in one .

place downadup. Now anyone times dog com, slash APP.

So lisa, tell us more about what you accelerate learning about people's motivations when you started talking .

to them yeah I mean, what I learned was that every individual woman has a variety of reasons for running the surgery. There is no single reason. And the question is really like, which is the thing that tips the scale and makes the woman decide to do IT.

And so I talk .

to a lot of women in person and on the phone, but I also spent a .

lot of time on social media.

Let's go head. There is a huge restructure conversation happening on tiktok, on instagram.

on youtube in a reduction because IT has always been a struggle.

And from emerging myself in all of this conversation over many, many weeks.

I would recommend a breast production to anyone.

Considering that, I would say that there are three main reasons why women decide to reduce their breasts. And the first .

one is just physical pain. OK physical pain, straight up pain. My back was constantly in pain. I could not walk for more than a mile without having to stop.

A woman with very large breath often has back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain.

I used to actually get chest pain sometimes because I used to feel like I was getting suffocated by my chest when I would lay down or wear tight clothing.

Often there's brushes underneath her. SHE can get headaches from the pain. IT can be a real struggle.

IT is physically painful to wear most types of Brown tops. Take tops. Anything that supports them pain.

So there is a medical need.

Pain aside, I also used to find IT. Hard to find clothes.

Sometimes another is a sort of a fashion impulse.

I could not really shop at regular department stores because none of the clothes really cared to my body.

which is just that if you've grown up with bigger breasts, you've been wearing constraining clothes for your .

whole life, wearing slim suits, that was always hard.

Gain the sun, find the difficult.

And almost every single woman I talk to for the story said that her aspiration going in was to buy a bra or bikini. A target, like spend fifteen dollars by something off iraq have would be cute and sexy and carefree.

Any story you can think of, I probably gone there and like they didn't have my size, they don't really Carry thirty two .

and under finding closed that fit comfortable ly, that's IT. That's the reason. I was a thirty hate when I was fifteen, so you can imagine the stairs I go. And I think.

you know, this is a third bucket. But IT really encompasses .

everybody when you .

grow up with very large breast, especially if you're very Young.

Just weird, weird men, and just stays all the time, which has a fifteen year old being self conscious, anyway, was not nice.

You are objectified and sexualized from an incredibly Young age.

At sixteen years old, you have these dogs that grown men are looking at and sexualized. People look at you.

People have thoughts about you. People think you're sexually when you are not. Everybody said this to me.

People always say you look like a horr. You look like a slide. Because I constantly have my books out. And honestly, I would try to have my books out I am wearing.

And a lot of women talk to me about shame. They felt, from their moms, from their teachers, from their siblings.

I was bullied because I told this, god, I want to be his girlfriend. And he and I think of my chess.

One woman told me that everybody in her neighborhood called her fast because he had very large breath as a child, and he had a lot of older brothers, and they basically didn't let her out of the house along.

I went to the bathroom and I cried and was.

so I think, no, I think it's intuitive. That is hard to be that girl. But talking to these women really brought that home for me. They're Carrying a lot and they're Carrying a lot for a long time. And so when they have a chance to change that, they do.

But also just listening to you tick off the reasons why woman might want the surgery. I can kind of imagine people reacting with different levels of acceptance depending on how quote on quote legitimate, they decide. The reasons is, for example, somebody has an esthetic desire versus medical need.

You can see how people would respond differently about whether they personally felt that the surgery was, like I said, legitimate and IT kind of reminds me of how people lie about having a nose job like they say, oh, I had a deva. It's up done because, you know, people are not super open about this stuff always about plastic surgery. And so i'm curious, for all of these reasons, do women who get breast reductions do they feel pressured to like, justify their decision in some way? Is this something they talk about openly.

like I can't even say how much.

not at all. Hello, boy, best calling you .

guys really like.

not at all.

So I am one month post up and I only have positive things.

suicide instead of .

being embarrassed about plastic surgery or wine about IT or hiding IT.

all of the girls that said that you're confidence skyrockets could not be a trust statement.

Women tell women about their reduction.

So I just took my three months post up photos, and i'm gonna show .

you literally, like showing their breasts to each other.

Here they are. I can not believe that they look. My girls are perfect now.

They are the same sizes and party. They're not bothering me now. They are just doing their thing. Love them. I was the best decision.

I've there are, of course, women who are unhappy with the results in here .

to be that person, to tell you that there are negative things and they're not worth having smaller roles.

Women have gotten terrible infections, takes a long time to recover from them, but the vast majority express no regret .

or doubt. If you are thinking about getting that production, do 我要 参赛？

And why do you think that is?

I think it's a lot of reasons we are in a post me too moment. And Young women are really determined to get in charge of how they're perceived in the world and not let their particular body parts be their introduction into any role they want to, to control their presentation. They wanna be able to cover up or expose as they wish.

They don't want to be part of the sort of male gaze industrial complex at all. So that's one reason. And the other is that especially Young women like jensie women, have a very different relationship to their bodies than my generation does.

They are really avid consumers of plastic surgery in general. They do ARM reductions and fillers. And I like stuff and stuff.

I haven't never even heard of not being a consumer plastic surgery, really. They have a just a much more open idea about being able to change their body as part of self expression. That is not an idea I grew up with.

What do you mean by that?

We grew up feeling ashamed, embarrassed that we were flat chested, skin, whatever, not volatile, or whatever, whatever. And then we became enlightened as Young women. And that moment we were like, no, no, i'm perfect. All of my calculators perfect, and my great hairs are perfect, and my big nose is perfect.

And this sort of alliance with, like the body acceptance movement, right? Like you don't have to be some kind of idea going back to the plastic surgeon in the medical journal, like you don't have to huge that that is not your problem, that is not your business. Stand up and like love yourself in every shape that you have.

And so, you know, when I approached ed, the genie women, and I was like, why do you want to do this stipulating that, you know, there's pain and health concerns here? What I was pRobing forward, I was poking out, is like, don't you think you're perfect already? Why do you wanna change your body? And what they said was was surprising, which was like, no, no, I am doing this for me.

This is autonomy. And if I want a different kind of breasts in order to wear a different kind of outfit or present in a different kind of way, that's not an admission that i'm competition. That's an expression of autonomy and independence and freedom liberation.

I just can help you think like, as you're talking about this, that this feels both new because we're talking about a trend of breast reductions, which is a new thing, but IT also feels like kind of a age old argument. As long as plastic surgery has been around, it's been debate of like are you doing IT for you as truly empowering? And even if you think it's truly empowers and you're doing IT for you, you're actually doing IT for somebody else.

And what do we think the right answers for? Like who's allowed to do what? Even if the woman says that you doing IT for one reason, we can always trust her, that he understands her reason. So IT feels like, what's all this new again? I guess.

a little bit. I completely agree with you, and I thought about that a lot as I was reporting the story. Like, why am I second guessing the reasons that they're telling me? Yeah, exactly.

yeah. And one of the most revelatory conversations I had was a conversation I had with a pass size model who sort of confessed that he was considering a breast reduction. And, you know, he makes her living being a person in a different body than the conventional idea.

And yet SHE, too, attracted by this idea that he might be able to uninquisitive erself by reducing herrets. I presented this dilema to her, like, are you supposed to just love who you are? SHE was like, yes, yes.

But we all live in the world. We all take our bodies out into the world, and we get cat called, and we get looked at and we get judged. And people think things about us. And IT is impossible to be a female person in the world and not absorb those signals. And so although in some ideal universe were able to live, and you know, god given bodies with happiness and is in the real world, that is impossible.

So given all of this, where did you actually land you yourself as the reporter who happens to be a person in the world on this question of who is this for, and whether this is just yet another way to make women feel inadequate about our bodies?

Yeah, yes, to both.

Like, yes. One like I I .

think that the minute you try to make women choose, you missing the point. And I see this in my own life, right? Like I have a daughter.

And I made sure always to tell her how beautiful he is, no matter what. And I want her to grow up with a sense that lake, nothing about her body, is a thing to be ashamed of. A corrected or fix store inadequate like that, is the identity I hope that he Carries through the world.

At the same time, I had dress cancer several years ago, and I had a rest reconstruction. And so, as I think I alluded to, like, I am not a plastic surgery person. That is not my natural choice.

And yet the breast cancer forced me to have a presty construction. And what I will say about that is that my breath look Better. They just do.

They just do. I am, you know, a middle age, late in the age women, they had some miles on on. I breast fed my daughter. I ran to marathon's like the lifted breast is like, nice. And so although I wouldn't have chosen IT, and I formally would have had all kinds of judgment about IT, I feel that IT is an enhancement. So who might the judge?

Well, lisa, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Love being here.

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. President elect trump continued a series of surprising choices for top roles in his second administration, picking celebrity physician doctor mamet az. To oversee the centers for medicare and medicated services and Howard latinic, a wall street executive whose leading trumps transition team to service commerce secretary letters ck, the head of financial firm counterforce shirl, would be in charge of an agency with an eleven billion dollar budget and wide influence over a broad swash of the economy.

The choice of doctor oz, whose faced criticism for his sometimes dubious medical advice, comes after trump chose robbert Kennedy junior, a notable vaccine skeptic, c, to lead the department of health and human services. In his announcement, trump said that the two men would work together to quote, take on the illness industrial complex. Today's episode was produced a livia nt eric crop key and richco l. Buncha IT was edited by mark George with help from Chris haxo contains original music by leash, a damn alevi, youtube and marizano and was engineered violist moxy. Our theme music is by jibu berg and benlysta of wonderly.

That's IT for the daily i'm Rachel abrams see tomorrow.