I, like a lot of people, enjoy breasts — boobs, breasts, tits, hooters, ta-tas, honkers, melons, milkers, chesticles, jugs, knockers. Both my own, and others; what’s not to love? 

Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, boobs are implicitly tied to a lot of people’s sexuality and gender, not to mention identity and self-confidence. I am not exempt from this. I draw a lot of my own self-concept and womanhood from my tits, even though I know that link has been forcefully instilled in me. I don’t think it’s shallow to feel this way either. Whilst I am a cis woman, I struggle a lot with feeling ‘woman enough’, like I’m not performing my prewritten role up to the inconsistent and ever-changing standard. But just by having a part of my body fulfil this societal expectation of it helps, even when I don’t present or act particularly feminine and know having them isn’t necessary or inherently tied to womanhood. 

So why all this talk of tits? My family, on both my dad’s and mum’s side, have faulty PALB2 genes, as part of BARC2 genes. The BARC1 and BARC2 genes are otherwise known as the breast cancer genes. For me, and all the other women in my family, that means the chance of developing breast cancer increases by 55 percent, and the chance of developing ovarian cancer increases by 5 percent. This isn’t just a women’s issue. It increases both men’s and women’s chances of getting breast and pancreatic cancer, and also increases the chances of prostate cancer in men. 

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about this genetic defect in the family. I know the treatments, the chances, the tests, without being able to pinpoint when or how I learnt them. As soon as I started to develop breasts, my mother taught me how to do self checks, and reminded me that I would have to get yearly MRIs from 30 years old and mammograms yearly from 40 years old. Whilst risk-reducing mastectomies aren’t as common nowadays, many women in my family opted into it. My grandmother got a hysterectomy before I was even born. None of my family are sure what going through menopause feels like, because we have never quite reached that age without something coming up beforehand. 

One of my earliest memories of the healthcare system is going to visit my mother after she had a lump removed from her right breast. It’s hard to say what effect this has had on me, but it’s one of the clearest memories from my childhood. My grandmother on my mother’s side has had breast cancer three times. My aunt on my dad’s has had it twice. Nobody I know intimately has ever died of it, but it’s an ever-present fear. The knowledge that someone close to me, or even myself, could be killed by the very piece of my anatomy that feels most tied to my adult life and gender, haunts me. 

So yeah, whilst I love my breasts, they also terrify me. Which is a little bit ironic to me. This part of humanity that’s so necessary to early survival and part of the process that provides life, could be the very thing that does me in. Of all the things, had to be my boobs. 

This of course means I have considered the implications of what I would do if I got a diagnosis at some point; it’s better to be resigned than surprised. There are many treatment options, but the one that has preoccupied me the most are mastectomies. This is probably because it’s such a radical, and actually uncommon and not recommended course of treatment nowadays. But still, the idea that I may have to remove such a seemingly useless, but nonetheless important, part of my body and self is alarming. It is an amputation after all. 

I know what this procedure has done to strangers and people in my family alike. It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, even if it’s preventative and not life-preserving. You have to give up a physical piece of yourself, a piece that has been forcefully tied to your womanhood and how you are perceived as one whether you agree with it or not. I don’t know that I have the courage to do that; I admire anyone who does. I’ve seen the aftermath of it; the second-guessing, the loss and the grief. I’ve seen my family get questioning looks at the beach. I’ve seen them try and move on after a tremendously terrifying fight to save themselves at the expense of how they see themselves and how they relate to their gender. 

Women should be given the grace to make life-saving changes to their bodies, without fear of judgement and stigma. Women should be allowed to feel loss over those changes, without others telling them that the choice they made was wrong. Women should be allowed to have, not have, replace, augment, enlarge, reduce, remove, pierce, tattoo and even shave their boobs. Women shouldn’t have to give you a reason for a change they have made to their bodies. I want to be able to make difficult decisions about my own body, without having to consider social implications along with everything else. I like having tits, but the judgement I receive for them, no matter what I do to them, taints it a bit. I want to enjoy my tits in peace, please.