Friday Forum: The Blue Footed Booby

It was the 6th grade, and all of us girls had been seperated into classrooms away from the boys so we could watch videos about our inner workings (as if we were fine tuned clocks). We shifted in our seats as the the lights were turned off and the video commenced.

We girls all pretended that we knew everything about everything but really our ears were perked like hunting dogs trying to take it all in. Thank goodness the lights were down because we could blush in private without some of the cattier girls catching on. Then for weeks after that day, we would check each other out in the hallway and in the locker room and silently compare notes as to who had gotten their period, who was wearing a bra (or needed to!) and to discuss the vending machine in the bathroom that held all of those womanly thing-a-ma-bobs.

We were all verging on womanhood but we were all still children too. In Mr. D's science class a few weeks later, we watched a video tape on the blue footed booby. There were giggles from the girls AND the boys over that one and in the halls you'd hear people taunt 'You're a blue footed BOOBY!' and the hall would erupt into laughter. It was all about the boobies in those days.

We ladies still stress about those lumps of tissue and flesh today- whether they are too big, too small, or too disproportionate! Some of us let those mounds define us as though we can't possibly be a woman without them partly because society teaches us that we are (ahem) sexual beings from an early age.

Breast cancer runs in my family. Big time. As in, it's probably just a matter of time when I'll get nailed with cancer. So I have to ask myself sometimes if when it really came down to the wire whether I would lop off those tissue-y forms and reconstruct anew or if I would part with them forever as the mark of a survivor. They've been with me for so long that an empty void there might seem strange and out of place but they've also (almost) served their purpose. Once Chloe is done with them, do I REALLY need them? This is where Troy would be emphatically saying, 'Yes!'

So here's today's forum: Would you? Could you?

Would you get a double masectomy BEFORE cancer became an issue or would you ride it out and see what happens?

Could you live without breasts or would you reconstruct?

And lastly, have you done anything special for Breast Cancer Awareness Month?