Human Body Aesthetics: What is "Collateral Damage?"

I get my best blog topics in the shower. So, even though it is 1am, I hastened down to my laptop to write.

I have an appointment at Sy-Lene Lingerie in DC tomorrow morning. My mom is taking me. I need another post-surgical cami that holds surgical drains in a cute little pocket. I also look lopsided,.

I was a DDD cup on the left. (Gone now!) and am still a DD cup on the right. But lefty is now an uber perky C cup. So, I have an appointment to get fit for two new non-underwire bras plus cookies, aka "falsies", bright and early.

As I showered tonight, I noticed that the swelling in my stomach was going down. Not in the "deflated dough-like" way it did after childbirth, but segmentally.  Never have I felt more like the proverbial elementary-math pie. The left upper quadrant is smaller. (Not surprising, that is where my one remaining surgical drain is. Ohh....shocker.)

I also noticed that I haven't been this svelte in years. (Since my wedding and honeymoon.) And I, vain and selfish creature that I am, like it.

However, I've always been a strange idealist/realist mix. (Hey-you try being a Capricorn Wiccan raised by a politico and a marketing exec.) I know what should be but I also realize what works. And by "what works" I mean what skims the line of socially acceptable in fashion and style.

For me.

Screw everyone else.

But am I too hasty to appreciate the new breast? It's much perkier, much more "fashionable." If it were a simple breast reduction, I don't know many people that wouldn't think that having it reduced wasn't a good idea in terms of appearance.

But having breast cancer seems to elevate it to a weird realm of fashion holiness.  I'm "allowed" by society to fully embrace my new boob whilst mourning the old. 

It takes cancer in this society to allow us to choose what we publically like about our bodies, in the fashion-sense? The rest is just "disposable," to be cheered on when we finally "get rid" of it, either by exercise or plastic surgery? We choose healthy things in our bodies that are "collateral damage?"

Shame. I did always think it was rather funky,that unclothed, I looked like the " the "Venus of Willendorf".

Now I look like half that, half the Venus de Milo. Really, I'm not putting a link to that one-you should know it. It's on just about every Italian brochure and humorous greeting card about bodies out there.

OK  Head hurts now. Going to bed. I promise to be funnier in my next post.