Can a boob job help your career?

Simona Halep hits a return to Serena Williams at Wimbledon.

Simona Halep hits a return to Serena Williams at Wimbledon.

Published Jul 8, 2011

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London - Would a woman mutilate herself, slice off the most intimate, tender part of her body, for the sake of her career?

It’s a controversial topic and one that provoked heated debate after Romanian tennis player Simona Halep admitted she’d done just that.

At the age of 17, Simona decided that nothing would stand in the way of her ambition to make it to the top in tennis.

Tired of her game being hindered by what one blogger rather patronisingly described as “those funbags”, she underwent breast reduction surgery two years ago to reduce her measurements from a 34DD to a 34C.

Perhaps as a result, she has since shot up 450 places in the world rankings.

She was knocked out of Wimbledon by Serena Williams, but still deems the operation a success.

Her decision, however, has been widely condemned - “slice off part of your anatomy for money and trophies?” sums up the online consensus.

But as an athlete, her body’s ability to perform is everything. She experienced back pain, too. I am sure also she hated the whistles and cat calls when she was trying to focus on her game.

Personally, I think Simona has been very brave. I admire women who put their career before everything, even going as far as to go under the knife.

Because that is something I did, too.

Aged 29, I had very big breasts indeed. I know I am going to be asked here to give an exact measurement, but I can’t. I didn’t measure them, fearful I would go into shock. But looking back, I would say I was about a DD cup.

I always wore a bra several sizes too small because I found those big, foamy, matronly bras too disgusting to contemplate.

I only owned the one bra and wore it day after day. This bra - I remember it well - was dingy, frayed and cut my breasts in two, giving me four enormous breasts. I hated my breasts so much that I didn’t want to do them the courtesy of providing them with pretty lingerie. I didn’t celebrate my breasts, I punished them.

As far as I was concerned, my breasts were interlopers; they were not my fault. An anorexic from the age of 11, I had never had breasts before. I was used to jogging or attending ballet class with two perfect upstanding buds with no need of support.

The reason my breasts sprouted was because, aged 22 and dangerously thin, I sought medical help at St Barts hospital and was prescribed steroids to make me put on weight. They did so - but only on my cleavage.

My breasts swelled like marrows after a rainstorm. For an anorexic - fearful of growing up, of male attention, of womanly curves -this was alarming, to say the least.

I hated my new breasts. My small frame made them all the more pronounced.

I had few mirrors in my house, but staying with a friend one night, unused to her bathroom, I caught sight of my breasts. I couldn’t believe what they looked like. They hung almost to my waist. They were covered with purple veins. They had huge, stretched nipples.

I knew I had to get rid of them.

By that point, I was working for a Sunday newspaper. Despite the aforementioned too-small bra and a baggy oversized sweater and a man’s overcoat from Paul Smith, I could not hide my cleavage. Once, I saw two men exchange a lascivious glance as I stood up and felt mortified. From then on, if ever I had to get up and walk to the art department or to the ladies’, I would gather up a big file and hold it rigidly in front of me.

I remember the moment I decided to have surgery. My newspaper was helping to launch the British fashion magazine, Elle, and we were running a taster within our pages. The first cover showed a picture of Yasmin Le Bon looking boyish, her torso forming that delicious S-bend you only see on ballerinas. (As a child, I’d fallen in love with gymnast Olga Korbut’s childlike body in that tiny leotard; I’d never wanted Ludmilla Tourischeva to win the ‘72 Olympic Gold Medal, she was far too voluptuous. Olga was vulnerable, sweet and brilliant.)

The cover line next to Yasmin Le Bon spoke to me, called out to me (oh goodness, you magazine editors, you must be so careful what you write!). It trumpeted the fact chic women in Paris were getting breast reduction surgery to enable them to look good in couture. It was as simple as that. I read the article and was hooked; I would do that, too.

Of course, I had heard of breast reductions before but it was the fact women were doing it in the name of fashion - something I so dearly loved - that made it so seductive to me.

I had to have the operation privately, as my GP would only have sent me scuttling back to St Barts.

I told no one: not a friend, not my family. I remember sitting in the private room I couldn’t afford (when I later had to pay my surgeon £2,500, the cheque bounced!) the night before. The surgeon came in, asked me to remove my top and drew over my chest with a purple marker pen. “We will remove your nipples, make them much smaller and replace them here. They might not take,” he said, much as a gardener might speak of a cutting. “If over the next few days they turn black, it will not be good news.”

Looking back, it sounds rather terrifying, but at that point nothing would have deterred me - not even the risk of death.

The operation took four hours and while the nipples didn’t turn black, they had - and still have - no feeling. I would never, the surgeon told me as I came round from the anaesthetic, be able to breast feed.

The scarring was terrible, as if he had sewn me up with a darning needle. But I was tiny, a 34A, positively flat chested.

I remember getting a taxi home (you are not allowed to drive for months or lift anything or lie on your front and I had to wear a bra 24 hours a day for the first six months) and looking at my new torso in a mirror for the first time.

Blood had seeped through my white T-shirt from the incisions under the breasts that snaked into my armpits and from around each replanted nipple, but I was thrilled.

I looked, I thought, much younger (I was still barely 30!) and so much more in-keeping with who I was, who I am: Not a sexual person, not a mommy, but invisible.

But what of the effect on my career? I can’t say the operation solved my underlying fears or neuroses but I did feel more confident at work.

I’d never approved of women who wore low-cut tops or flirted in the office, so had always dressed smartly. The difference was now my androgynous suits hung nicely and men looked me in the eye, rather than at my cleavage.

Back then - and we are talking over 20 years ago - women had to behave like men in the workplace. There’s no doubt that the operation helped with that.

On the other hand, it didn’t boost my confidence in relationships. While I enjoyed dressing my new body in fashionable clothes, I became even more wary of men in case they tried to touch me there or wanted to see me with my top off. I couldn’t bear the idea of them seeing the silvery, raised scars.

Even 12 years later when I married my husband, I was still self-conscious. He was very understanding, never expecting me to undress. But ultimately he sloped off to find a woman who was more comfortable with his caresses and gaze.

So, in the long run, was it worth it? I so hated those breasts that refused to respond to lack of food or exercise, that I still think my only recourse was surgery.

But the scars (mental, physical) meant I missed out on a lot in life. About eight years after the operation, I went back to the same surgeon to see if he could excise the scar tissue.

“I can’t get a boyfriend until you do,” I told him.

“What, you mean you haven’t let a man see you since the op, which was when you were turning 30?”

“No.”

“You mean you have let your 30s pass you by? What about children and sex and happiness?”

I shook my head.

So, I do regret what I did, just a little bit. I looked great in a Helmut Lang androgynous jacket (designers are hopeless at accommodating the female form, even the best of them), but I was rubbish at life.

I wish Simona Halep the very best. Perhaps she will even win Wimbledon one day.

But maybe, like me, she should be careful what she wishes for. - Daily Mail

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