It’s common that women are pressured to get breast implants by a husband or boyfriend. Even when their implants are making them ill some men still pressure their partners to keep their implants. Or, reject them once the implants are removed.

To these men I say, “DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU IN THE ASS ON YOUR WAY OUT!”

My husband pressured me to get breast implants and through my own insecurities I caved, though feeling I was being rejected. Me, my breasts and the very essence of who I am was being rejected. He didn’t just want me to get implants, he specifically wanted me to get Kim Basinger’s breasts. I wish I’d told him he should instead get Tommy Lee’s ‘package’.

When I told the plastic surgeon, with my husband present, that my husband wanted him to sculpt my breasts to look like Kim’s he was unphased. Any plastic surgeon with a shred of integrity should have taken that as a ‘red flag’ and asked if *I* really wanted breast implants. I would have said ‘NO’.

Even more troubling is that though I didn’t want them, I caved to the pressure, convinced my breasts that had nursed four babies were deficient in my husband’s eyes. Even though through my own sensibilities I believed there was nothing more beautiful. My breasts had nourished the loves of my life. I saw the pure gold of that, but deferred to the man that lusted for the breasts in Penthouse and Playboy.

I quietly harboured resentment.

When rupture was diagnosed I’d been ill for a very long time – 16 years. I was so angry with my husband when I found out my implants were not only leaking, but silicone had migrated into my chest wall, that I couldn’t even be in the same room with him. I didn’t want to see him, talk to him, or to even know he existed. After a couple weeks of processing the emotion I realized what I’d known all along .. I couldn’t be mad at him without being mad at myself. Yes, he was a shallow buffoon when he suggested I get breast implants, but I was the one that had agreed to get them despite desperately not wanting them. I learned compassion and forgiveness for both of us. We’re still together and have agreed that it’s important to talk about men pressuring their partners to get implants as it is so common. If our experience can help someone else it’s worth it. My husband would never have suggested I get breast implants if he’d known the true dangers of them. Like the rest of us, he believed they were safe.

If someone is trying to convince you to have toxic fake sacs implanted, instead of caving to their pressure I encourage you to look with curiosity at what it is in you .. in your beliefs about yourself .. that could ‘hook’ you into believing you’re not ENOUGH without breast implants. It’s YOU that has to pay the price when things go wrong, and they WILL go wrong at some point. It’s YOUR health that’s on the line.

In the end we all (those negatively impacted by breast implants) wish we’d just LOVED OURSELVES as we were without implants.

** The ‘before’ explant photo is difficult for me to look at because it reminds me how hard, painful and misshapen my breasts were because of Grade IV capsular contracture. They were really flipping cold also. They were actually so cold from the start that I asked the ps on my 6-week follow-up after getting them if the implants were going to freeze. As years went by thick calcification added to the hardness, pain and coldness. Inside my rock hard ‘breasts’ were also multiple silicone-filled granulomas, necrotized tissue, infection, and acute inflammation specific to silicone in breast implants .. and silicone filled lymph nodes and masses. It’s unbelievable that right up until explant doctors here tried to tell me there was nothing wrong with my breasts, and no correlation to health issues. Even after rupture was diagnosed I was told removing the implants was elective because it was inconsequential to my health. It’s simply stunning that doctors doing breast exams didn’t advise me to have the implants removed ASAP! **

** I was painted for my ‘Celebrate Your Breasts Project’ after I was explanted. Everyone that participated was painted with their own personal message. For me, having my implants removed was about returning to myself (I’m a total hippie), thus the paisley 60’s theme. Also I wanted to reflect the lesson of self-love that I’d gotten the hard way, thus ‘my worth is not my breasts’ and ‘beauty is within’. My artist painted pac-man hearts over the silicone-filled lesions in my left breast symbolizing my body destroying the lesions (though that hasn’t happened yet). **

(Nipples covered for the internet)