As told to Lauren Gordon by Lauren Shelley.
Having large breasts is not as glamorous as it is made out to be. By the time I was 19, my chest was a size E cup and I had been dancing competitively for 15 years. As you can imagine, trying to squeeze into lycra costumes and prance around a stage is difficult enough without an added 4 kg (8.8 pounds) worth of breast. I wanted to pursue dancing as a career, and 10 years ago, we didn't have access to the plethora of body positive information that we do now so I didn't understand that I was able to do it no matter what my size was.
So I decided to go to Thailand and get a breast reduction.
Being a teenager is really hard, and I honestly thought a breast reduction was going to fix everything.
I also had huge self-esteem issues and had battled through mental health issues and an eating disorder in high school. I had fantasized what life would be like afterward, but like many who have surgery, I found out that my problems were still the same post op.
I was romanced by the idea of having a holiday and some plastic surgery at the same time. Booked in to have lipo on my tummy and a reduction done at the same time.
Because I was under 21, I needed to get my mom's signature. She didn't like the idea of me having surgery overseas and tried to reason with me, but I am stubborn and I wasn't budging. The woman who owned the business actually called my mom and convinced her that everything was going to be OK.
She said "Lauren is an adult and can make her own decisions," and my mother eventually conceded.
So off I went to Thailand.
Prior to the operation I had a consultation with the doctor.
It was documented that I was going from an E cup to a C cup with a 350cc implant after the reduction. That is a tiny implant to make them a "perky" C. The doctor wasn't going to use the tradition keyhole method. He cut a different shape to ensure that there was no scarring under the breast, just one single line from the nipple.
Waking up all I remember is my sister being there and she said "They look really big." I was assured that it was swelling and that they would go down to a C cup as discussed. But as days passed, the "swelling" didn't go down, and in fact, they were a G cup — a size larger than I had (gone) in with.
A few days later I confronted the owner and the surgeon, and he told me "aesthetically your body looks better with bigger breasts." There was nothing much I could do at this point. I remember sitting on the balcony of our lovely hotel and hiding from my sister so I could cry.
When I got back home to Australia, my mom called the owner and yelled the house down. The woman said to my mom:
"Lauren was not old enough to make this decision and you were the one who signed the papers."
What a manipulative b*tch right!?
I was working for a law firm at the time and I took the papers to one of the lawyers and he said that there was nothing I could do.
He told me I essentially signed away my life. So there I was, stuck in a place with my body that felt worse than how I started.
Afterward I spiralled into a depression. I quit my job in the law firm and started doing random bar jobs and travelling around Australia.
While what happened to me isn't a common occurence, The biggest lesson I learned was that plastic surgery cannot change your life. Which I suppose, in turn, helped me learn that the value of my life was not based around the size of my body.
But it would be many years until I learned that lesson.
I now have a love/hate relationship with my breasts.
They are a part of my identity, but often they are subject to a lot of attention and it’s not the kind of attention I like. After my self-love enlightenment, I built a healthier relationship with my breasts. They are still extremely painful, uncomfortable, over-sexualized, and annoying, but they are in some ways a part of my identity.
Having implants means that I will have to have them removed at some point, but until I have a spare 10k lying around, I have a healthy enough relationship with them to get out of bed and be proud of my body and what it allows me to achieve every day.
My advice to people wanting plastic surgery is that it won’t change your life.
You will wake up with bigger or smaller breasts, but your problems are still the same.
