After 25 years spent trying to love her ‘droopy, asymmetric’ breasts, Laura Tennant threw in her support bra and went under the knife 

Post op: Laura is happy with her cleavage for the first time in her life

I've wanted to have a boob job since I was 18. By then it had become clear that I was never destined to develop perfect, symmetrical, self-supporting, C-cup demi-globes. The kind of breasts that could go bra-less, if they were feeling frisky. The kind that would pass the ‘pencil test’ with flying colours. The kind that would win top prize in a wet T-shirt competition. If breasts like these are the ideal, my own offerings were all too humanly flawed. Not only had they blossomed to be a different shape and size to one another, but they were droopy rather than perky. They were, I felt, a source not of pride but embarrassment, a shameful secret which I could disguise with the help of cleverly engineered underwear, but which, when ultimately and inevitably revealed, would provoke not excitement but disappointment in future lovers.

Yes, I was pretty screwed up about my boobs. Lots of women are; according to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), the number of cosmetic breast procedures rose by 23 per cent in the UK in 2009. Breasts are so very loaded with emotional, psychological and cultural resonance. There’s only one other body part that is more obviously sexual, and that, thank goodness, is tucked neatly away. Breasts symbolise our sexuality, our fertility, our very womanhood, and yet not many of them live up to the perfect champagne coupes of the dancers of the Folies Bergère. In fact, the women I know who are truly content with their breasts are in a minority (and are usually only too happy to demonstrate them by stripping off, as if to say, ‘I know! They just grew like this!’).

Breasts come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and for millennia enjoyed brief periods of bouncy exuberance before getting down to the vital task of breast-feeding the next generation, eventually ending up somewhere round their owners’ waist. These breasts never knew the joy of a lacy half cup, subsumed as they were in their biological destiny. Today, however, breasts have become detached from their primary purpose, just as women have become liberated from the primacy of their reproductive function. And this is both a pleasure and a trial. The novelist John Updike said that, for most men, a naked woman will be the most beautiful thing he will ever see. And, of course, every woman wants to be the most beautiful thing her lover will ever set eyes upon. We move in an aesthetic and cultural realm as well as a biological and animal one, and breasts unite these two worlds. No wonder we all want a great pair of tits.

I was pretty screwed up about my boobs. Lots of women are

All the same, presented with a member of the opposite sex, most men do not quibble over pencils or asymmetry. They tend, in fact, to be grateful for what they can get, and my 32D cups were at least a comforting handful. Yet looking back on my somewhat neurotic younger self, I realise my breasts mirrored a deeper psychological anxiety about the disconnection between my inner and outer selves. I could no more expect the world to accept my breasts, I feared, than I could expect it to accept the unvarnished truth about me.

And so they continued to be a source of private sorrow to me. In the 1980s, in my age group, going topless on the beach was virtually obligatory, and I suffered much breast envy as a result. A boyfriend who had an unhealthy interest in his previous girlfriend told me when pressed that she had ‘better tits than you’, a remark that wounded me to the quick. Another boyfriend, surveying my naked form, drew a line with his hand under my breasts and said, ‘From here downwards, you are perfect.’ I was slim and pretty, yet naked, there was something fundamental I didn’t like about my body.

I think I was 21 when I took the plunge and made an appointment with a surgeon in London’s Harley Street. Having measured the distance from my shoulder blade to my nipple on both sides, this kindly man advised me that I had nothing to worry about – or, at least, not enough to warrant going under the knife. And I had enough self-awareness to realise that learning to love and be grateful for what I had was a worthwhile exercise.

I didn’t need to be a physically perfect specimen to be wanted by someone; like the depression from which I occasionally suffered, my breasts were a quirk, an imperfection, a complication, but they didn’t mean I was too messed up to love. So I compromised by putting myself on a waiting list for NHS cosmetic surgery, reasoning that the immense time I would have to wait would give me ample opportunity to reconsider my decision. For the NHS to pay for my cosmetic surgery, I would have had to claim that my breasts were causing me psychological trauma – and, patently, they were not. When I finally got to the top of the list, breast surgery seemed an extreme solution to a problem that had almost solved itself.

At 31, I had the first of my two children, and my breasts rose magnificently to the challenge. My babies surged through their growth percentiles on breast milk alone and I felt intense, primal pride and gratitude. It was impossible for me to dislike breasts which had fed, soothed and comforted the most important people in my world. However, I couldn’t help but notice that stretch marks had now added to their careworn look.

It was when I hit 40 that I began to consider breast surgery once again, although it was a procedure that still seemed expensive, self-indulgent and unlikely to produce the effect I wanted. I didn’t, after all, want bigger or smaller breasts; I wanted different breasts.

But I also became more forgiving of them. They weren’t perfect, but they’d stood me in good stead. Then one night I was standing naked by the bed and my boyfriend said, ‘You’ve got beautiful breasts.’ No one had ever said that to me before. My boyfriend loved my funny-looking boobs, because he loved me.

So why now? I suppose because I feel I’ve paid my dues. My surgery didn’t arise out of depression, or to please a man, or because I’m paranoid or overly self-conscious about my body. I invest time, money and energy in my appearance and on a good day I feel as beautiful as I did when I was 20  – more so, in a way, since I am beautiful to the man I love. Yet I am 43 and I wanted to look at myself in the mirror and really like what I saw. My surgery wasn’t even anti-ageing; it was a way of fixing what was never quite right, to my satisfaction.

My surgeon, chosen because his reputation was unimpeachable, was Rajiv Grover, consultant plastic surgeon and president elect of BAAPS. Mr Grover made it clear that if he felt my breasts needed nothing more than a decent bra from Selfridges, he would send me away. ‘The reason I get such good results and so many satisfied patients,’ he told me, ‘is because I only perform surgery on women I can genuinely help.’ After
the examination he was able to confirm that my breasts could do with ‘a bit of a lift’. I was fortunate, however, in that my mastopexy didn’t require implants; instead, things just needed to be nipped and tucked. I would finally end up with breasts almost exactly the same cup size, and a much nicer shape.

Mr Grover went on to tell me that he sees many women my age, in their 40s, who have either had children and want to regain their pre-pregnancy bust, or simply want to improve their breasts’ shape and size having completed their family. He showed me ‘before’ pictures of women who looked very like me, and ‘after’ photos of firm, even, rounded, pneumatic and virtually scar-free breasts. The cost would be around £6,000, the ‘downtime’ ten days, the pain minimal.

To be frank, I didn’t really have to think twice. If I was going to do it, now was the time. And from this perspective surgery seemed like a fabulously sensible investment. Not having surgery wouldn’t leave me miserable; I was too grown-up for that. But deciding to go through with it, like buying an Armani overcoat, would give me pleasure, confidence and a good return on my money for years.

One month on, I am still getting used to my neat, girlish, magical boobs. I have gone down to a C-cup (a more elegant size, in my view). The scar line around my nipples blends invisibly into my areola, and the scars going down from the areola to meet a line underneath my breasts are fading fast. Nipple sensation will return fully in about six months. Weirdly, my new breasts feel far more ‘mine’ than the old ones ever did; perhaps because they fit better with my conception of the ‘real’ me. I have been told this sensation is common among people who’ve undergone cosmetic procedures.

But life-changing? Absolutely not. And perhaps that’s the point. My reasonable expectations of what new breasts would do for me have been more than met, but then I never anticipated anything more dramatic than quiet, private gratification. That, and the buzz of slipping on a backless, strapless, gossamer-light dress with which it is quite impossible to wear a bra.

For advice and information on cosmetic breast surgery, go to baaps.org.uk.

For information on Rajiv Grover, go to rajivgrover.co.uk

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