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Tuberous Breasts - To Fix or Not to Fix?

 
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I’ve seen postings recently in a feminist forum about tuberous breasts, and whether one would be justified in having plastic surgery to improve them. The woman who initiated the discussion said she wanted to have the procedure to fix her tubular breasts, but felt bad about it. As a feminist, she said she felt “angry” that she was longing for surgery and even that she “wanted to die at the thought.”

If there ever were a condition that might drive a woman who thinks that “plastic surgery, on the whole, is ridiculous” to go under the knife, tuberous breasts would be a good candidate. Named for the fact that the breasts resemble tubers in shape, tuberous breasts (sometimes called “tubular breasts”) are formed when the base of the breast is smaller than usual. This constricted circumference causes the breast tissue to push forward and sometimes down, exacerbated by the fact that the inframammary fold (where the breast attaches to the chest wall) is often higher than normal.

Women with tuberous breasts usually have large areolas as well. When all these factors are present, it’s easy to see why one of the nicknames for this condition is “Snoopy breasts.” Although you may consider the famous Beagle adorable, you probably don’t want to have breasts that remind you of his nose.

In most cases, to create breasts that are more pleasing in appearance requires a bit more work than simply inserting implants. Plastic surgeons often need to make internal incisions to release constricting tissue and expand the base width of the breast. The breast pocket may need enlarging to accept an appropriate implant. Because women with tuberous breasts often have scant breast tissue, it’s often best to place implants below the chest muscle for a natural looking result. For this group of patients, silicone gel breast implants should be considered, as they tend to hold their shape well.

The feminist whose posting I read said that her tuberous breasts were “self esteem shattering” and that she always kept her bra on while having sex. In my view, those feelings are reason enough to feel ok about considering plastic surgery, regardless of which body part is the culprit and how “cosmetic” the procedure might be. In fact, body image is the key. If you happen to have tuberous breasts and aren’t bothered by them, great.

But this woman, who obviously does suffer significant embarrassment, can take comfort in the fact that tuberous breasts are considered to be a true deformity. Dictionaries define “deformity” as a part of the body that’s abnormally formed, “abnormal” meaning not usual or typical, deviating from what’s considered standard. What would you do if you were born with a cleft palate? Webbed fingers? You’d probably have surgery to fix the condition. And you’d probably feel a great sense of relief that you took the plunge.

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EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

I have an extreme case of tuberous breast. I am 22 years old and have unfortunately been mocked because of the size and shape of my breasts since i was 14. It all started in gym class where i accidentally let my swimsuit slip and was teased for years. After that, it was the first boyfriend i had who broke up with me the day after he saw my breasts and called me a freak. Over the years, i have had comments both spiteful and some in a light hearted way (mostly about the sagging, large droopy areolas and mostly about the size - can't even fit into an 8A bra) , but they all really hurt the same way. I can't wear bras/swimsuits without padding and i really hesitate to take my top off during sex - this upsets me a lot because i know that i am a confident person and it kills me that as soon as take my top off all my confidence is gone, i am shy, distant and constantly trying to cover my breasts - men notice as well and it just makes the whole experience of sex even more awkward and eventually the relationship awkward. I tell myself this is why most men don't stick around much long after sex.

I always tell myself that i won't feel the pressure of society telling me what is beautiful and what is not and it is hard. Some days i feel good about myself and convince myself my breasts aren't that bad, then other days i just cry and wonder why i have this "deformity" (it doesn't help when it's called this either as it reaffirms i am not normal). I don't think that i will ever get surgery. It's a personal choice and i don't condemn anyone who wants it done because it really depends on the person, situation and whether it is right for you. On the other hand, i don't always want to feel this way about myself. I don't want to look in the mirror and see what i see. For now, i don't really see a solution or a change in the future and instead i am focusing on accepting what i have and trying to remember that individuality equals beauty (even though its hard sometimes : )). I just wanted to comment to share my experiences with women who are like me and good luck with whichever route you all take.

July 11, 2010 - 7:10am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

Well, the point is: to feel well about "touberous breasts" is very hard in this culture in first place and the choice is outright unequal if it is publicly viewed as a "deformity", as a kind of sickness, and if women (and men) are permanently confronted with round, big (augmented) breasts as THE ideal of beauty and "feminity".
Hence, I totally understand anger and disappointment of wanting such a procedure because that means one has a lowered self-esteem because of breasts that don't look the way beauty industry, porn etc. and society view it beautiful.
The anger and disappointment results from the insight that hardly any woman would want such a procedure, or would even think of her breasts being "ugly" or "abnormal", if all shapes and sizes of breasts were equally accepted and appreciated - and: if there wasn't such an collective obsession about certain body parts and their look, may it be big, round breasts or supersized butts. Imagine women would be crazy about toes, and wanted to augment them, and define a great deal of their self image about having big long toes of a certain shape - wouldn't it be crazy and self contemptouous? This idea might seem absurd. But it's just absurd because our culture isn't collectively obsessed and doesn't define women due to their toes and the look of them. You cannot judge individual feelings and choices independently from the culture. Therefore I happen to find it quite cynical to reduce cosmetic surgery on plain "individual choice" and "personal preferences", as if such things come to happen randomly and free of external pressure just from the inner self of a person, as if it's kind of a game, or the failure of the person's body to be "wrong", instead of societal norms defining it as "wrong". That's just not true. Without enough pressure and a certain mentality about bodies, body images, their importance, econimisation and standardizing of bodies, legitimacy or importance of more or less severe body modification there wouldn't be such a social phenomenon of people making such decisions.

The extent to which - especially female - bodies and looks are standardized, examined and strictly judged has increased strongly within the past 20 - 30 years, or at least it has changed toward higher expectations and more severe and widespreading physical changes.
For a woman, who is usually socialized to be very attentive about her own body and criticism towards it, who learns that what others think is "beautiful" needs to be conformed, and who recognizes that a certain sterotype of "looks" is seen much more important and you are judged and measured by that, it is very hard to escape the pressure.
If you permanently get feedback from your environment that look x is better than look y, or that look y is even disgusting or at least not very welcome, you will almost certainly internalise this mentality as your own and judge yourself and maybe others by the same standards. And given these facts, that society or parts of society, let it even be single people who insult a vulnerable person, destroys self-confidence of people based on their looks, I find it absolutely understandable to be angry about "giving in" to the pressure and let it be such a dominant motivating factor in your life. It is the anger that one is even willing to hurt one's body to fit into cultural norms, that one has actually adapted these norms, and that by having breast augmentation or another procedure, one takes actively part in putting even more pressure on others to do the same, because now even people who "actually know it better" feel they can't stand it anymore. Severe lack of self-esteem aside, this can be very burdensome for a reflected person who understands how socialisation and social pressure works and who sees her role and responsibility in this puzzle, but yet isn't free of it or uninfluenceable - because she painfully experiences it on herself.
Maybe women or men, having deficits in self-confidence due to their bodies, but not critically reflecting what the causes are and don't question norms of how a body should look like (due to gender gap the norms of "female" and "male" beauty are quite different), have an easier decision - one way or the other. Maybe they won't experience such tough cognitive dissonance in either way they're dealing with their self-image.
Nonetheless, reducing self-image problems to merely individual "bad luck", and applauding the giving way of adaptational pressure as quasi-"empowerment" without regarding consequences - for the person acting and for others - doesn't meet the requirement of such a complex issue. For me that sounds like encouraging the development of a smoking habit as an "empowerment" against having to inhale the smoke of others, but "emancipatedly" causing oneself lung cancer. [sarcasm] Yey, what a progress! [/sarcasm]

I myself have what nowadays - in times of norming bodies to mainly one standard and increasingly stigmatizing natural deviations as "sickness" - is called "tubular breasts" (I conciously omit the usually added, abusive term "deformity" here).
I recently found out about the term and that it is contemptouously called a "deformity" by cosmetic surgeons (who make more money of more people believe them) and people who believed them or people who want women to have breast augmentation. Well my self-confidence hasn't increased due to this stigmatisation - oh surprise! - but lowered.
I never felt very happy about my breasts. As a teenager and young grown-up I was often teased by boys and men because they were small. Ironically I was hardly ever insulted because of my generally very thin figure, which usually includes having small breasts.
That men I knew, men's magazines, porns, public media, including underwear-advertizing for women always depicted big, round breasts as the perfect ones, displaying them as the ultimate female sexyness and quite much hailing them, added up to my lack of self confidence - even though I know how crazy and pathetic such people and their mentality must be.

But my experience with women is different than illustrated here: I often experience great tolerance for procedures like breast augmentation or a general big boobs-obsession with women who are more or less well endowed, at least usually have no perky, tubular breasts, which look smaller than they actually are due to their shape. My guess is that they - as their breasts more or less correspond to the norm - don't even have the slightest idea of how much pressure there is for a woman to have the "right" boobs and how humiliating it can be not to have them. They often won't even notice the fundamental pressure in our culture or that there is such a norm which many women naturally do not comply with and therefore are made to feel "inadequate" or "unfeminine". That is usually not of bad will, but because they don't feel affected and thus have never been confronted with this side of the coin.

This makes me, not only politically, but personally very sad, angry and disappointed, because I know I wouldn't have such severe self-confidence issues, I would't think negative of the size and shape of my breasts if there wouldn't be such a fuss about female breasts and a norm about their size and shape. The same as I don't become depressive about my toes. I just wouldn't care.
This is why I refuse to seriously think of a "boob job" (what an euphemistic phrase, actually) as a realistic option - besides I fortunately couldn't afford it anyway. To get a boob job probably wouldn't free me from this mental trouble, it would just change the perspective and help a cosmetic surgeon becoming rich by exploiting a low self-confidence, but it wouldn't change anything about the societal pressure. Besides I actually don't want to be more likeable or attactive because of shape and size of "boobs". Cognitive dissonance would probably stay, either way. Despite and because of inner and outer pressure...
At least I often try to become more comfortable with my body, especially my breasts, sometimes I succeed. But then I'm always confronted with the collective and/or medial preference with breasts completely different than mine and everything goes down the tubes again (no pun intended). To built up an already damaged self-confidence and to hold it on a higher level constantly is definitely harder than to destroy a solid self-esteem.
This is a really hard struggle for me, day in day out. Then to hear people promoting and encouraging to rather physically change and get hurt just to fit in, is really hurtful and counterproductive for a positive self-image and not getting "brain-washed", at least for me. Like I said, hundreds of thousands of women getting breast implants because they feel inadequate or want the "perfect" tits, or even become totally "boob greedy" themselves, like one anorexic is greedy about slenderness, isn't really helpful in accepting oneself naturally, without such a procedure, and it is far from being a completely free, individual choice. I know. So please don't take this so easy. It is not.

July 9, 2010 - 7:27pm
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

I have recently learned I have a mild case of tuberous breasts, I actually had no clue. And though like you, I understand why women would get breast surgery as an option, I have seen some severe cases of tuberous breasts corrected very nicely with surgery. I think they should try other options first, like therapy. Learning that we are all shapes and sizes and that we are all beautiful in our own way, and as others mentioned there are men and women who find tuberous breasts sexy. Some men like a nice butt and legs and could care less about breasts, some men like women to be a BBW, it's all a matter of preference. I had no clue I had tuberous breasts until I was on a forum I normally go on and a lady posted pics of her breasts saying she thought they were horrible, and they looked just like mine!!! Hers were a size smaller, her areolas a little smaller, and her nipples were darker then mine, but otherwise we could be twins in the breast department. This forum is a Natural Breast Enhancement forum. And I can say this, I do natural means of breast enhancement and it has worked for me, my shape has changed, they have gotten bigger (started my journey a 32A and I'm not a 32C). So there are more options then surgery, and I feel you should have said those in this article rather than focusing on surgery. As far as my method of choice for breast enhancement I use a breast pump (not a milk pump but one for breast enhancement) and I have taken a few different supplements, most crap out on the market doesn't work, you got to do research to find what works. But I can see a big difference in my breasts now. So I feel others can fix themselves without surgery. Exercise helps too. Either way I get the point of your article, but feel it's incomplete.

April 16, 2010 - 3:41pm
(reply to Anonymous)

I'm the one that wrote this anon comment last year on April 16, 2010 at 5:41pm. Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner, just now got an email about comments being added on here. Since this post I continued my NBE (Natural Breast Enhancement) journey and got to a 32D, I acheived that last year before stopping NBE all together for a while. I am now starting up again to get another cup size or two (I've gotten greedy haha) or just to maintain my size while I lose weight on the rest of my body, either one I would be happy with. To the lady that asked what I did for NBE, my journey is posted on this forum in the gallery section along with my before and after pics... http://www.noogleberry.com/forum/index.php there is anothr forum I'm on called Breast Nexus their link is http://www.breastnexus.com/index.php but it appears they are having some technical issues at the moment, but hopefully it will be up soon. Both forums are FREE information, free to join of course, I am not here to sell anyone anything. Just trying to provide my source of information where I found what worked for me in NBE.

I can now say I am very happy with my breasts, I'm happy with their size, though I think another cup size or two would be better lol. Their shape has improved drastically and you would never tell I was slightly tubular before. I of course still have big nipples, they are about the size of those round facial cotton pads that are used to remove makeup. But with the added breast size and improved shape, I now look more "normal". They of course are not perfectly round like implants would do, but they are nice and natural!

If you are unhappy with your breasts just know there are many options out there besides breast implants. Do your research and inform yourself before making a very life changing decision. Just for the record I do not personally ever want implants which is why I did what I did with NBE. But I in no way look down on those that get it. I just want to help people make a better decision before making the wrong one for them. There are many ladies on the NBE forums that had implants, got them taken out because they hated them and are now trying to reconstruct their breasts (bless them) with NBE. Implants are a no going back type decision, so make sure it's 100% without a doubt what you want. Good luck to everyone acheiving the body they want to have. :)

Anastasia

January 30, 2011 - 11:09am
(reply to Anonymous)

Hello, this also made my day. Perhaps you could tell me what kind of breast enhancers/supplements you took? I am still young and I believe that this can be corrected on my own, as I might still be growing. Thank you so much for making the point about Cathy focusing on surgery when there are different possible options. Great point and great advice.

August 2, 2010 - 12:22am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

I have only recently discovered that my breasts are tubular after watching an episode of embaressing body's on channel 4, my breasts have not finished growing yet as i am 17, but i am worried that they will stay this way(a small B Cup) i would really like to find out more about tubular breasts and the corrective surgery, also how much this would cost and weather it would be free on the NHS.

February 27, 2010 - 4:50am

Hooray for you! It makes me so happy to hear about someone choosing surgery to improve their self-esteem and general outlook. Surgery is definitely NOT for everyone, and there are many times I cringe when reading about someone deciding on something that seems crazy. But the step you took is one everyone should be able to understand and applaud! At least I do!

All the best for a wonderful rest of your life, with this stumbling block out of the way.

February 16, 2010 - 3:43pm
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

Hi there! I realize this article and it's subsequent posts are "old news" now, but after reading through it all, felt compelled to reply. I just wanted to say that I too, found myself feeling just as you did about my tuberous breasts. I had no idea they even had a name.. I just thought I was a freak, and there hasn't been one day, since I was about 14, where I've woekn up and thought "I look great!" Instead, no matter how the rest of me looked, I always focused on my breasts.. I felt such shame.. the thought of telling *anyone* was absolutely mortifying to me. I can't tell you the number of nights I cried myself to sleep, wondering "why me?" Like a lot of women with this condition, I've never felt normal. I've avoided wearing a bathing suit for YEARS because there would be no way to hide my breasts in one. I'd never worn a bra without having it heavily padded. I did all I could to avoid being "found out" and I *know* that my feelings about my breasts (and consequently, about myself) held me back, not just from relationships, but from life in general.

Someone who commented on the article mentioned that having tuberous breasts meant she'd never know what it would be like to have "sagging." Well, not all tuberous breasts are small enough to avoid sagging. In fact, it's been my experience through the research I've done, that they tend to sag right from the get go- as it's just the way they develop, and no amount of excersize or eating right is going to stop that. Hell, I'd gladly take saggy boobs at 40, just as long as they looked normal, you know? Anyway, a few months ago, I went onto Google, hoping to find some answers. That's when I stumbled upon the term "tuberous breast deformity" for the first time. I began reading and checking out photos. It was such an incredible feeling to realize that I wasn't alone- and that there was a name for the way my breasts were. So, at the age of 29, I finally had the courage to go see a doctor about them. He confirmed my suspicions. I then researched and eventually went for a consultation with a plastic surgeon who told me he could correct my breasts and give me what I'd been praying for my entire teenage and adult life. Now, 4 months later, I'm two weeks post-op and am *so* glad I went ahead with the surgery. It wasn't, and hasn't ever, been about having "big boobs." I just wanted to feel NORMAL. I feel like this is a new beginning for me, and I encourage any woman with the condition who has been affected negatively by their tuberous breasts to seek out help. There's NO shame in doing something to improve your self-image and self-esteem.

January 29, 2010 - 11:40am

Thank you for your comment and best of luck with your surgery. I can certainly understand not wanting to undergo the procedure, but if you've chosen a board-certified, experienced surgeon you have every reason to be optimistic about the results. I'd really like to know how it turns out for you. If you'd like, would you send me a message through this site and let me know? You could also post a "share," or I could write about your experience. I would enjoy that very much and I'm sure other women would like to hear from someone who took the plunge.

I've also observed that some of the loudest voices of protest are those who are not suffering. I feel like you do...having surgery or not is such an individual and personal choice that it's ridiculous for someone to come out "for" surgery or "against it." How can you make a pronouncement or judgement about someone else's life?!

Since your breasts make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin, more power to you for doing something about it.

Cathy

January 10, 2010 - 11:58am
EmpowHER Guest
Anonymous

As a person with tuberous breasts, it is refreshing to read an article like this. Despite not wanting to have surgery, I have felt embarassed about my chest for the last 10 years and so will undergo surgery in a few months. Similar to the subject in the article, I have never felt comfortable taking off my bra while having sex or in any sort of public setting like the local pool change rooms. None of my partners in the past have ever commented, but I personally feel very uncomfortable and am always apprehensive before I expose my chest. My bras do not fit properly and neither do a lot of outfits.

I also find it interesting that those against breast augmentation are often those who do not have tuberous breasts or a severe case. i.e. Anonymous above says "nothing hangs" and "to look good they require maintenance". At 25 years of age, one of mine does in fact hang and always has hung despite trying to 'solve' the issue with lots of moisturiser, exercise and massage over the last 10 years. Both are of unequal size, one nipple is much larger than the other, one hangs and one has stretch marks while the other doesn't.
I think what we all need to remember here is each case of tuberous breasts is very personal thus a woman's choice to get surgery should not be at the judgment or comment of others. If you're happy with your appearance than that is truly fantastic. However, please do not make other women feel bad or guilty for trying to get to the same "mental" space you are with a bit of assistance with surgery.

January 10, 2010 - 3:27am
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