First of all, I think we can all agree that the best moment in this essay is when Nell spends an entire paragraph listing different words for boobs.
Secondly, I read this essay months ago when I googled Nell (like I do all my professors– sorry!) and ended up finding her website. I read a good few of her essays, but this is the one that’s stuck with me the most. At the time, it really made me examine how I think about recipients of plastic surgery, especially breast augmentation. I remember when I was reading it thinking, “oh my god, what weird information I have on Nell!” and then, a few paragraphs later, admonishing myself for thinking it was something I had on her, as if having implants after a mastectomy were the equivalent of, say, having a criminal charge of public urination. (Which she doesn’t have, to be clear.) Still, I kept the information to myself. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for the song on the wind having the lyrics of “Nell has fake tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiits.”
People talk a lot about breast implants. Like, a lot. Nell even addresses this within the article, with her quote from Sarah Silverman about, “You see, I still have real breasts. I don’t mean to brag; it’s just true.” This quote is from the year I was born. My entire life, and most people’s entire lives, fake boobs have been a big, cushy punchline on which lazy comedians have been able to land. Women want to adjust their natural appearances. Hilarious! Being me, and thinking I was better than everyone, I thought in my Genuine Feminist Brain that I was completely okay with people who got plastic surgery and that I didn’t judge them at all. This essay proved me wrong. Nell shows us that my experience wasn’t such an uncommon one, telling us about the podcaster (apparently Florence Williams, of Breasts Unbound) describing dinner with four women as “eating salad with eight plastic breasts,” demonstrating how even the progressively-minded forget the person attached to the implant.
One of the moments from this essay that’s stuck with me the most was Nell and her mother sitting in the doctor’s office. “She wants to be just the way she was! she snaps,
insinuating that your choice to go bigger would somehow be anathema to the very person you are.
Mom, please.”
Similarly to The Fourth State of Matter, we tend to think of breast implants not so much as a part of a person’s life or body, but as a thing that happens, suddenly, to other people. One of the statistics Nell gives us is that 4% of women have breast implants. Why was I surprised to have met someone who had them? Why do I assume she’s the only person I’ve met who does? This essay puts a face on what’s considered a delicate issue, thereby allowing us as readers to more empathetically engage with this subject in the future. (Messed up how I’m still assuming the readers don’t have implants ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)