I didn’t get a boob job. I got my body back.

This wasn’t for men. It wasn’t for lingerie. It was a reclamation. A return. A restoration of what I never should’ve lost.

I didn’t get a boob job.  I got my body back.
Photo by Victoria Strukovskaya / Unsplash

I was never flat.
I was full.
For a Chinese girl: I had breasts. Real ones. Heavy. Alive.
I wore them like they belonged. Because they did.

And then I gave them up.
Not all at once.
Not in a moment of choice.
But in a slow bleed of trying to be acceptable.

A man called me fat.
Another called me a beached whale.
They didn’t touch me with cruelty.
They touched me
with opinion,
with judgment,
with expectation.

And I listened.
Because I was raised to give.
To bend. To slim down. To disappear.