billion-dollar industry<\/a>. Countless women turn to cosmetic procedures every year in search of the \u201cperfect\u201d pair of breasts.<\/p>\nAccording to Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard, who coordinated the Australian sample of the study, most of the women who wanted to go up a size liked the idea of being just a bit bigger. \u201cOn average, these women had an ideal breast size slightly larger than their current size,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Filters and falsehoods<\/h2>\n
Why do so many of us want to look bigger, \u201cbetter\u201d \u2026 boobier? As an adolescent, celebrity culture had a huge impact on my own perception of beauty.<\/p>\n
The women I idolised mostly conformed to the male gaze\u2019s traditional beauty standards: immaculate skin, perfect teeth, shiny hair and, you guessed it, a flawless set of curves.<\/p>\n
As an adult, I understand that cosmetic surgery, stylists, skin therapists and makeup artists go a long way to creating these goddess-like beings. But when you\u2019re 15, you assume they just roll out of bed like that.<\/p>\n
Over the last decade, this perception of perfection has snowballed, fuelled by Instagram and the prolific use of filters and editing. It\u2019s not just pop stars and Hollywood queens that look impossibly glamorous, but small-time influencers and anyone who has access to FaceTune or knows their way around clever angles and lighting.<\/p>\n
As Associate Professor Prichard points out, this has an alarming effect on our self-esteem. \u201cLike any form of media, platforms like Instagram provide a range of different ideals for people to compare themselves to,\u201d she says. \u201cThis can influence the way we think and feel about ourselves. In particular, if we compare ourselves to the images we see on these platforms and feel like we don’t measure up, this can have a negative impact on the way that we feel about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it\u2019s a vicious cycle. The celebrities and influencers who conform to these impossible standards often have the biggest following, further enforcing a single archetype of beauty. So prevalent has this look become online that The New Yorker journalist Jia Tolentino wrote about \u201cInstagram face\u201d in 2019. She describes \u201cthe gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face. It\u2019s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips.\u201d<\/p>\n
Breaking the cycle<\/h2>\n
Fortunately, there are plenty of women on social media championing a more inclusive image and a \u201cno f*cks given\u201d attitude. For these ultra-confident women, their self-assurance is their sex appeal. It doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t buy into beauty culture \u2014 we all want to look our best and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that \u2014 but they are open and transparent about what goes into looking a certain way.<\/p>\n
I applaud any celebrity self-assured enough to admit to having had breast implants. Anna Faris, Kaley Cuoco and Iggy Azalea come to mind. Their transparency frees young women from false beauty ideals. It means we can get breast implants too if we want, but if we don\u2019t, we know that\u2019s why theirs look that way.<\/p>\n
Kudos, too, to the celebrities who share #nomakeup selfies or before-and-after shots when they\u2019re getting ready for big events. Then there are the women with smaller chests who celebrate what they have.<\/p>\n
Something that helped me learn to love my own unique body shape was seeing Keira Knightley embrace hers when she appeared topless in Interview magazine in 2014. The photoshoot was performed under the condition they wouldn\u2019t photoshop her images \u2014 a rebellion against an industry obsessed with \u201cimproving\u201d women\u2019s bodies.<\/p>\n
“I think women\u2019s bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame,” said Keira in an interview with The Times. “Our society is so photographic now \u2014 it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape.”<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Prichard is a big advocate for seeing more variety in mass media. \u201cIf we can add more diversity into the media, and reduce the weight stigma that surrounds people in larger bodies, then people will be able to more readily see that healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes and the ideal body is not a ‘one size for all\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She also believes we need to focus more on appreciating our bodies for what they can do, rather than how they look, and look after our bodies using healthy exercise and eating behaviours, rather than punishing them for not looking a certain way.<\/p>\n
A dumb, miraculous bag of fat<\/h2>\n
I recently caught my reflection in a shop window. I was wearing a skin-tight dress and, without a bra, there was no hiding my pass to \u201cThe A Club\u201d. But I felt good, because I saw the \u201cno f*cks given\u201d woman underneath. For me, that has meant ditching any ideas of breast enhancement surgery and loving my boobs for the perky little handfuls they are.<\/p>\n
No woman should ever feel ashamed for getting breast implants. For many who choose it, it\u2019s about loving their bodies the only way they know how, and most importantly, feeling amazing afterwards. But I do take issue with the message pedalled to us that bigger boobs are better, sexier and more feminine.<\/p>\n
As Chrissy Teigen said, explaining her decision to remove her breast implants on Instagram: \u201cI\u2019ll still have boobs, they\u2019ll just be pure fat. Which is all a tit is in the first place. A dumb, miraculous bag of fat.\u201d Here\u2019s to those dumb bags of fat, no matter the size.<\/p>\n
Lauren Furey is a freelance writer who loves deep dives into tough topics on all things culture, society and the messiness of humanity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The female form comes in all shapes and sizes, so why are so many of us unsatisfied with what we\u2019ve got? Lauren Furey delves into breast size and body image, and reflects on her own journey of learning to love her A cups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":2085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,73],"tags":[428,400,123,274],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2098,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions\/2098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellbeing.com.au\/curious\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}