The Case of the Missing Areolae: Race and Breast Reduction Surgery — Page 9:
41 It, therefore, should come as no surprise that when a woman seeks to exert property rights over her breasts, to right/write her own life, by seeking breast reduction surgery, the culture seeks new and additional ways to remind her that she does not and cannot ever have control over her breasts. Her breasts belong either to men and/or to medicine. With both men and medicine in the U.S. being nurtured in the Anglo-Saxon cradle of cultural ideas, so too must women’s breasts be held to the Anglo-Saxon idea of the perfect.
42 Yes, I realize I continue the materialistic metaphor of territory, in the grip of metaphorical thinking. Doing so, I aim to meet the other where he stands, in a frame within which he feels comfort, before shape-shifting him to another place of being so as to be with her where she and her areolae have their real existence. “It is our human condition to be unable to escape the dimension of the Symbolic” (Davoine and Gaudilliere 68).
43 In writing about breast reduction and decisions about how to handle the details of the breast such as the nipple and the aureolae, the issue of choice dominates, as a result of the need to frame the entire discussion within the context of one of contested power, because of the reality of the domination of patriarchal concepts. On the one hand, what seemed of most importance to surgeons was developing techniques to reduce the amount of scarring as well as developing techniques to maintain as much as possible of sensation in the breast, especially in the nipples. These objectives would seem in the interest of the women themselves, albeit also in the interest of the men or women with whom the woman might be having an intimate relationship. On the other hand, nipple projection, as mentioned earlier, as well as high placement on the chest and conical shape, are also important objectives to the surgeons. These objectives seem less focused on the best interests of the women as individuals and more focused on the interests of the culture, and of male needs, conditioned by culture. But nowhere in all the research articles on breast reduction surgery was there any discussion or debate about the size of the areola, except with a brief mention about proportionality. However, more recent websites of breast surgeons and clinics at least briefly mention the desirability of the woman discussing areola size pre-surgery with the surgeon, while often making the assumption that the cause of a larger areola (from the perspective of the surgeon) results from the stretching involved with the larger breast.
44 None of them checked with her younger sister who has natural size B breasts with aureolas half the size of the breast, not this tiny darkness around her nipples that she got after surgery.
45 When it comes to determining how much of the areola to remove, I conclude that clear cultural and racial influences play an important role, as a result of embedded cultural definitions of beauty. A breast with more areola tissue than found on a European or Asian breast is deemed undesirable, if not ugly. To increase the desirability of that breast, the size of the areola must be decreased, in an environment of almost total silence about that decision. Is it because the areola is always darker in color?