Why I’m not pretending I haven’t lost my breasts to cancer | Monica Dux

Having a mastectomy is tough enough without the added pressure to have a breast reconstruction just to conform to conventional representations of womanliness

As a small-breasted woman, my boobs have rarely been ogled. Yet this year I’ve noticed people copping stares at my chest. At the dog park a woman who stopped to chat spent the entire time with her eyes locked well south of my chin, like those sleazy tit-talkers that big-busted women complain about.

I wanted to say “Go on, ask me, where has my breast gone?” But I didn’t, because then I’d have to answer my own question. And telling people you have cancer is exhausting, eliciting a mix of pity and fear, where you know what they really want to ask is: Are you going to die? Or, as one acquaintance boldly put it: “Is it the sort they can treat, or the other sort.”

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