Breasts. Two lumps of meat, fat and glands that if cut open looks disgusting and ugly but covered with silky smooth skin would terribly excite any man – or woman for that matter.

When I was 12 I hated my B-cup breasts that were well over endowed compared to my classmates and even to those who were 2 or 3 years older than me. I walked slightly slouched in order to hide them; I was ashamed of them as well as the rest of my anatomy. Including my face and hair.

Back in those days, the common perception of beauty was that of girls with long straight hair, jet-black nonetheless, light fair skin, thin lips and a body as slim as a boy’s, a bit on the androgynous side.

I, on the other hand, was quite the total opposite.

I had short curly hair, brownish (despite of many unsuccessful attempts of dying my hair black using mom’s black dye), thick fat lips, deeply tanned skin and slightly plump figure if not a bit on the heavy side.

I hated my appearance, but I especially hated my breasts.

I thought they were high maintenance as all my mates were still wearing (cheap) practice bras and I was already wearing underwires which were extremely uncomfortable (and expensive) especially during sports.

I remembered looking at my girlfriends with envy while they were raising the flag in our weekly ceremonies on Mondays. They looked so smart and slim in their uniforms and they could all walk proudly without slouching because they had very little to hide.

When I turned 14, dad permitted me to subscribe to GADIS, an Indonesian teen magazine big in my days, and also envied all the models featured in them. `Why couldn’t I look like that?’ I used to ask myself while thinking how dreadfully unfair God was to give others a figure to die for and me a figure to die in shame of. At this time, I am the embarrassed owner of C-cup breasts that weighed myself down, sometimes aching my back.

Not until I was 16 did I start to thank God a little for my appearance. Sure I was growing wider, but I was also growing vertically.

I was up to 5″7, which made my overall figure not as bad as I once thought. Being taller than most girls, I didn’t appear too thick and my breasts did not look as humongous at they did when I was shorter. My short hair was also longer then and I learned how to use a blow-dryer to manipulate my frizzy hair to look smooth and straight.

But even so, I was still complaining about my weight and skin color, wanting to be slimmer and lighter skinned, but at least by then the beauty trends had changed a little. People were getting boob jobs (think Pamela Anderson) as well as collagen injection for their lips to appear more like Naomi Campbell or Michelle Pfeiffer (both known for their extremely luscious full lips). And the hairstyle trends also changed. Brown was the new black. And having natural brown hair, I started dying it a couple of shades lighter, gradually lightened it to dark blond.

At last I had some reasons to be happy about, my full lips, my brown hair and my breasts.

NOT.

I still hated my breasts.

Mom told me I was a lucky girl to have those (humongous) boobs. Hers were no bigger than a 12 year old. Normal 12 year olds. Not like me when I was 12. She told me that with my breasts, I can fill up dresses beautifully and I would look very sexy with low cut blouses.

So I started wearing low cut blouses because I wanted to know what sexy felt like. I still didn’t feel sexy. I felt more dirty than sexy, because I kept on inviting stares and flirtatious come-on looks from dirty old men. Yuck! I hated it! I was even more self-conscious about them. My boobs, not the dirty old men.

That went on for a couple of years until I met a friend of mom’s who’s had breast cancer. Let’s call her “Tante Uci”.
Tante Uci was diagnosed with breast cancer several years before then and had to have a surgery to have the cancer removed. She was left with no breasts but she didn’t seem to mind. I was a little confused, so I asked her how she felt about the whole ordeal while complaining about my life-long problem of DD cup breasts (YES, it was up to that size by then, such a nightmare that my beloved uncle Aa’, started to call me “watermelon”). She said she felt like her world had ended when she found out she had breast cancer, and she told me that she, too, had the same problem growing up.

She was self-conscious about her breasts and she hated them. Not because they were huge like mine, but simply because they were too small (As she was telling me the story, I secretly asked myself, ‘how on earth could someone feel that their breasts are too small?’) She finally had implants done in Singapore when she was 34 (she was already 40 when we had this conversation) and lived happily with her artificial C-cups up from AA-cups (which I then thought were more like zits rather than boobs) for 3 years.

She told me that one day she felt suspicious about the small lumps around her armpits and immediately had them checked out. She was horrified to be diagnosed with breast cancer as a result of leaked silicone from her implants. The cancer was already advanced and she had to have them removed and she had several months of chemo to prevent the cancer cells from coming back.

She advised me to never be ashamed of what I looked like, but mostly to never do something as stupid as she did for the sake of “looking good”.

She said: “If I can turn back time, I would have stayed perfectly content with my AA-cups and would’ve never had the implants because at least I would still have breasts instead of now having nothing at all. But it’s ok, at least I still have my health and people who love me”

I was amazed. But I was sad. For her, as well as myself.

Before talking to her, I was thinking of having a breast reduction surgery. After talking to her, I had a long thought about my twin buddies, and felt a strange gratefulness that I have never felt before. I was glad to have my healthy slightly over endowed breasts, rather than an illness leaving me with none.

Now, years after I had that talk with Tante Uci, I feel more satisfied with my appearance (Although I did have weight loss surgery, it was the last resort – a result of my obese-related illnesses and certainly not for the sake of wanting to look beautiful or ingratitude). I have learned to deal with my imperfections and I now love myself (and my breasts) more than ever.

I sometime wear my hair curly, I even sunbathe to tan myself (unlike so many other Indonesian girls who swear off sun and rushes to stores to get whitening lotions), I make my lips look fuller by pouting a lot (there goes my secret..), I am even proud of my curves and became a plus size model for a while.

But the most important thing is that I no longer obsess about looking beautiful, but I believe that if I feel beautiful, the beauty will shine from within me.

I guess the cliché is true. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.