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"Is it Miss or
Mrs. Morris?" the doctor asked the tastefully
dressed, gauntly handsome young woman his secretary
showed in.
"I answer to
either one," the new patient replied with a
nervous laugh. "I have been married, but my
marriage lasted only eight months."
"I'm sorry to
hear that. Suppose I just call you Angela. I
understand you have a breast problem."
"Yes,
Doctor!" Angela Morris spoke vehemently.
"I've stood it as long as I can, being shut out
of all the good things of life because of the way I'm
shaped!"
The doctor thought he
knew now what Angela's grievance was, for he had met
it many times in recent years. Though there was
nothing discernibly wrong with Angela's shape. Her
waist and hips were fashionably slender; the bust line
was high, ample and nicely curved. But the doctor felt
it would be best for Angela to tell her story in her
own way. He said, to draw her out, "You look like
a perfectly well-endowed woman to me. And an
attractive one, too, if I may say so."
Angela poked her bosom
scornfully. "These are falsies! I have to wear
them in my business. I'm a hostess in a big
restaurant, and it's a part of my job to look....well,
real feminine. Honestly, Doctor, the flat-chested girl
doesn't have a chance in any line nowadays!"
"What you say is
interesting. But judging from your appearance, the
falsies take care of your problem very well."
Angela laughed
bitterly. "I suppose they do, so far as a
superficial impression is concerned. But do you have
any idea, Doctor, what it can be like for a new
husband to find out he has been fooled? After my
divorce - my husband left me for another woman - I
fell in love with a man who was everything my husband
hadn't been. We went to the beach one day. I wore
falsies underneath my bathing suit, and they slipped!
Our romance ended right there.
"My real problem
is that I want to get married again, this time for
keeps. I want a home, babies, I want to be loved! And
I've learned that no man is going to love a walking
beanpole, after he finds out that is what she
is!"
The doctor had been
listening intently, without comment. Now he remarked,
"It's a funny thing, Angela. But when I was a
young man, the girls bound their breasts tightly in
order to have a boyish figure. The more they looked
like beanpoles the better they seemed to like it. And
the young fellows courted them just the same!
"I realize that
styles have changed. An emphasis is placed on
glamorous breasts today to an extent that I believe is
unnatural and unwholesome. They have actually been
made into a fetish. I know the problem this creates
for girls who feel they are lacking in this respect.
Frankly, I haven't much patience with the women who
merely want to call male attention to this part of
their anatomy. But obviously you aren't the
exhibitionist type. You want to be more satisfying to
the man you love - to feel that you are more of a
woman, right?"
"That's it
exactly, Doctor," Angela answered eagerly.
"That's why I came to see you. I've heard about
'miracle busts' that surgeons can build on a woman
nowadays, with paraffin and things like that. But I've
read that sometimes the stuffing got out of place;
that then women were worse off than they had
been."
"A shapely bosom
can be made without much difficulty out of small or
flat breasts," the doctor answered slowly.
"We call the new structure a prosthesis - an
artificial substitute for some missing part of the
body."
"How on earth do
you make artificial breasts that look and feel like
real ones?"
"It's quite
simple, actually. A semicircular incision is made at
the lower portion of the breast, where there will be a
natural line later that will conceal the scar. Nothing
is removed. But by skillful dissection, the surgeon
creates a pocket of the desired size beneath the
strategic portion of the breast. He then inserts the
prosthesis - in these cases a spongy plastic substance
that may be obtained in a number of different sizes
and shapes.
"Until recently,
there have indeed been some pretty sad failures in
this operation, because of the difficulty of finding
materials that will be tolerated within the body
tissues. Lots of things have been tried - foam rubber,
various plastics, and paraffin, as you suggest. They
didn't work too well.
"But there is a
new substance now, a kind of polyethylene sponge, that
is very amazing. It is nonirritating to the natural
breast tissue and it becomes almost a part of the
woman in who it is embedded. The excellent surgeon who
pioneered this operation has told me that the blood
vessels and connective tissue actually grow into the
new substance. That the artificial breast will bleed
when it is cut."
There was a dryness in
the doctor's tone that tempered Angela's growing
excitement. She said, perplexed, "It certainly
sounds wonderful. But you don't appear very
enthusiastic, Doctor."
"I don't
disapprove of these operations as such, Angela. They
may be very helpful to models or to actresses - the
glamour demands of our day being what they are. If I
haven't sounded enthusiastic in your case, it's
because I've been wondering whether a prosthesis would
solve your problem, and that of other girls who don't
have a career reason to justify it. You mentioned a
husband's, a lover's, disillusionment when he finds he
has been fooled. A prosthesis is simply falsies worn
underneath the skin. It would merely mean fooling a
man more deeply. You spoke of babies. Had you thought
about nursing them?"
Angela again gave her
bitter little laugh. "How could I, with my flat
chest? I couldn't nurse a baby any more than a man
could!"
"That's a
mistaken impression lots of people have. The size of a
woman's breasts is no criterion of her ability to
produce milk. But if you had this operation, you would
never be able to nurse a baby. You would
sacrifice the very function your breasts were meant to
serve. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, Angela. But I hate to
see a real, womanly woman like you sacrifice something
fundamental to her womanhood for what may prove to be
an illusion.
"Now I'm going to
be very frank. I think your principal trouble has been
that you've thought about your breast inadequacy too
much, allowed it to become an obsession. I think it's
your mental attitude that has been the handicap.
"This may hurt,
Angela. But I'd like you to ask yourself something.
Was it really your flat chest that ruined your
marriage, your love affair with Ed? Did your husband
reject you, or did you reject him? Did Ed break of the
romance when your falsies slipped, or were you just
too embarrassed to face him again?
Angela was crying now.
"I don't know, Doctor. I never thought of it that
way. My husband - well, it's no use going into that!
But Ed did call me several times after what happened
at the beach, and I made excuses. Do you suppose, if I
phoned him --"
"Why not? You
girls with beauty complexes of one kind or another can
be pretty bewildering to a mere man."
It was months before
he saw Angela again. She had married Ed, was expecting
her first baby. She was still minus a prosthesis and
had stopped wearing falsies too. Her face had lost its
gaunt look, was softer, sweeter.
"Ed likes me
better this way," she told the doctor happily.
"He says he'd just as soon other men didn't
keep their eyes riveted on his wife's bosom! Do you
really think I'll be able to nurse my baby?"
"I think you'll
nurse several babies before you are through, Angela;
and that your breasts will continue to be rounder and
fuller as a result of motherhood. That's better than
doing it with prosthesis, isn't it?"
"It certainly is!"
Angela said, in hearty agreement.
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