6 Women Share Why They ‘Went Flat’ After Their Mastectomies
Roughly 60 percent of women who undergo a mastectomy will opt to have reconstructive surgery to recover the familiar “look” of having breasts. However, there’s a growing movement toward going “flat” after a mastectomy.
The six women in the video below all chose to go flat after breast cancer. And, as it turns out, there might be some good reasons to join them.
For some women, like Melanie Testa, having breast reconstruction or wearing breast forms can feel like a lie. “I just don’t want to present two bodies,” she says. “I don’t want to walk out of my home with a breasted body and then return to my home and remove my breast and then have a flat body.”
For others, breast reconstruction simply isn’t an option, or at least it isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. Cost can be a factor, or health issues may make any additional surgeries too risky. Marianne Duquette Quoso wanted implants and got them—but after several infections, she became one of the roughly 20 percent of women whose implants cause issues for them, and she decided to have them removed. Those who have post-reconstruction issues but choose to keep their implants may have trouble sleeping on their stomachs, deal with multiple infections, or experience other complications and discomfort.