There is this theory that the Venus of Willendorf, the iconic paleolithic stone idol, was misrepresented after being discovered by archeologists. The statue is a supposed magic fertility symbol from around 30,000 years ago, found in modern-day Austria. Initially, historians believed she represented something akin to a mother goddess, hence the name Venus. Her exaggerated figure and emphasized anatomy reflect the idea she was a figure of worship.
But in 1996, Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott theorized she was actually a self-perspective of a pregnant woman looking down at herself, due to the angles of her body matching the eye line of a woman from modern-day doing the same.
In a time before mirrors, during significant population growth for humanity, the possibility was so poignant. The carving was a reflection of the body, of the shape of oneself. The first time I read this, the words struck my heart as I stared at my computer. Of course, it was a self-portrait, I thought.
This theory created a sense of wonderment in me. It also made me sad. When I thought of the Paleolithic woman who potentially carved this as her body changed to make room for her baby, I was stuck on the archeologists who examined these totems. Any agency from the ancient woman who carved this statue was removed by their gaze.
The exaggerated features of the Venus’ shape could only indicate, to anthropological eyes, some type of ritual. Her body was so deformed, so unnatural, that there was no other logical reason for her existence. She had to be in reverence to something that was not real.
For a long time I used to joke that I was built like Venus; and not completely in jest, either. From the front when naked, we were strikingly similar. Her shape felt familiar to me. In fact, I resonated with it.
When I looked down, I saw what the stone saw: the silhouette of my own exaggerated, cartoonish body, one where my chest extends down over my stomach. I could even rest my arms on top of my breasts, just like her tiny twig ones do.
The reason I believe McCoid and McDermott is because I recognized the Venus in my own mirror. Had I never gained access to one, I might also think I look how the figure does.
At certain angles, we might as well have been the same.
About seven months ago I got a breast reduction.
Throughout recovery people continued to ask how I’m doing, how I’m feeling. The answer is that pain-wise, I felt almost nothing. The incisions stung and the swelling tugged at my skin, but after two weeks it wasn’t super noticeable. By four weeks, I resumed life almost back to normal. Even if the pain was excruciating, though, I would do it again ten times over for the value this instilled back into my life.
I never expected to wake up from the anesthesia and feel like my body belonged to me again.
When I try to explain how I feel post-surgery to others, words fail me. I was met with blank stares and soft nods, but it’s hard to make people truly understand. Often I’ve resorted to showing before and after pictures of my chest because it’s the only tangible way someone without my experience can comprehend the relief.
Imagine you woke up and two large, fleshy masses hung from the top of your pecs to just above your belly button. They cover your whole front upper half. Imagine these masses were so huge that you couldn’t see your body underneath when looking down. If you wanted to cross your arms, you had to physically lift up flesh where both arms could meet fully underneath them.
When you stood up, over 5 lbs of weight shifted to the front of your torso, causing you to lean forward and walk kind of funny (since your center of gravity was off). When you lay down, flesh pooled on both sides into your armpits. Very often you stuck to lying down anyway because at least that way, you weren’t straining your neck and back.
In the summer, if you chose to do a normal thing humans do (wear just a t-shirt), the underside of these masses would rub against the entirety of your stomach. Sweat would instantly get trapped there, causing angry rashes to darken parts of your skin permanently from irritation. If you lifted up your chest, you could smell the angry skin, bitter and wet.
This was my life for 8 years and what I considered to be the baseline. It was normal.
There were other issues. The clothing I could wear was hard to find and needed to be made from specific materials. There were some silhouettes that would fit correctly and others I never attempted wearing. To me, a classic shopaholic, this broke my heart many times over.
Having a large chest size ruled my life. Over time, I accepted it. I never necessarily hated my body or my appearance, but I didn’t realize until afterward how much I self-imposed invisible rules onto my image.
This was not insecurity, it was not shame. But there was hesitation and fear because I could not move around in the world the same as most people do. At every public interaction, there were measures I had to take if I wanted to be treated like a person; not only by others but by myself, in relation to them, to appear less obtrusive from the neck down.
If I wanted to exist in public as I was, with just fabric between me and the rest of the world, I knew there would be repercussions. It wasn’t presentable. On the occasions I did go out braless, I retreated back into my apartment after a few hours because I felt so uncomfortable being in my own skin. I needed to be encased in polyester stretch sports bra several layers thick in order to do any little thing that wasn’t existing in my bedroom.
Inherently, my default was predetermined as unacceptable. This was never something anybody said outright, but rather, was an unconscious world created by my experiences and made clear by societal norms. When a part of your anatomy is no longer considered beautiful (except to fetishists) because it is not even close to “normal," it wears on you after a while.
Things came to a head one year ago, when I discovered I had a stomach infection. I ate a pambazo hamburger that the bacteria loved and it triggered gastritis. I was in intense pain and nothing gave me relief. I drove myself to Walgreens at midnight to get Alka Selzter, hoping that might do something. On the way back I had to pull over and vomit, twice.
When I made it back to the apartment, my chest hurt so badly that I couldn’t sleep. It felt as if someone was sitting on top of me, pressure exerting itself on my sternum like a dull thump. I was sweaty and delirious and insistent on not going to the ER out of spite as a fever that lasted 3 days began. I continued to puke until there was nothing left but bile. And the one thing I fixated on, the thing I resented the most, was how much I wanted to rip my boobs off.
The bodily horror of dealing with everyday life made it worse. I woke up each morning in a skin suit that tormented my ribcage and made it hard to exist upright. And I did not realize how much it wore on me, how much time I spent latently obsessing over them, how they looked, how they made me feel, until they were gone.
The feeling of waking up from a three-hour anesthesia slumber and not having to abide by these rules I’d created anymore blew my puny little mind. First, I noticed the clothing. I could leave my house without wearing the world’s tightest sports bra (inevitably unwearable after one year because I stretched it out). Not only that, I could try on bras at a regular store, like, as in any store (instead of paying $120 for an ugly one at a specialty shop).
I could shop for vintage clothing for the first time since I was a teen. I could wear A-line dresses. I could wear spaghetti straps, or halter tops, or button-up shirts without fear (previously buttons were my enemy). When I raise my arms, my nipples do not immediately escape from the bottom of my shirt. I can fit into a size medium now; this was not a part of my previous lived experience as an adult. Every day I discover something new that I’m now realizing was previously off-limits.
Around week 8 of recovery, I found out that I could jump free from pain, a luxury I had not experienced in over ten years. I bounced up and down in front of my mirror, delighted at the concept. My chest barely moved when I did. I did not feel a searing pain all the way down to the tip of my nipple. I did not brace for the impact of my own flesh smacking against my chest. In fact, it felt like nothing at all.
It was this feeling of nothing where there was once something that drew out emotions so intense my eyes immediately welled over with tears. Ever since the surgery I began to cry over nothing, because it was the nothing I longed for. I cried because I was angry that others could run, jump, or leave the house by throwing on a t-shirt, and for the last 8+ years I could not.
My body, despite being the one I was born with, robbed me of these experiences. I wept at the inability to live in my natural form, and how it squandered any sense of normalcy. And finally, I wept at what an incredible blessing it felt like to do so now.
I am beginning to forget what it was like before February. My scars have begun to fade and I’m fully healed. Stepping into the everyday has resumed and I am able to live the thoughtless life I’ve dreamed of since 2015. This was always my goal: I wanted them to get down to a size where I would barely have to think of them ever again.
Now, I am left in quiet awe. Desirability will always rule the realm of beauty. There are many aspects to undesirablity politic, and looking kinda like the Venus of Willendorf is only one of them. Her existence as a fertility idol proved, to me, that being in my old form could never give me peace.
If her “disproportionate” body is seen as a totem to be worshipped, that in itself dismisses her. Idolizing someone dehumanizes them. It furthers her from the realm of reality. Archeologists in Austria decided that the Venus was such an extreme depiction of womanhood that it cannot be based on a real person. But when I looked at the POV photos of Venus that McCoid and McDermott took, I saw so much of myself.
All I’m left with in this life is my form, my vessel, my only vehicle for experiencing the world, my body. I never wanted it to mean anything, and yet here were all these ideas and feelings I related to being superimposed onto me by my own thoughts, by the ideas of others, by these similarities to a little stone doll; all when I’m just trying to exist.
But now, they’re gone; and I can breathe again.