My earlier, longer post here had me worried people were going to think it was sponsored with the cheerfulness of it. Some of the information was really in depth, and readers likely werenāt going to pour over the entire thing about a very serious conversation regarding body image in society perhaps better for a later day.
Find Dr. Shaferās website here.
I decided to clean this up a bit and make it more serious in tone.
Posting this because I am:
extremely happy with my results going on almost 17 years later; Iām never redoing Dr. Shaferās corrective work on my breasts for the rest of my life; in the 0% chance I do, fingers crossed I never need it, āŗļø it will be going to see him!
giving Dr. Shafer the 5 star review, with my real name, he deserves for making me so incredibly happy with myself to this day on the procedure he fixed ā shhh, Dr. Shafer, youāre not allowed to divulge anything other than I was a patient! NO DETAILS, Iāll spill a few here, thatās it!
warning young people about how you can mess up your shape with āpretty" / āhandsomeā weight loss and not strictly the big weight loss makeovers or Ozempic makeovers we see
providing an explanation for people that no, Iām not going to drop a few dress sizes to damage my body anatomy again for the sake of any project you hire me for and why
A great example of the large area between reality TV star āplastic everythingā and āIām all naturalā superiority; I wanted a correction and got the huge confidence boost I needed. I canāt have fillers for obvious reasons outlined below. With my circle face and greasy skin, Iām never going to need Botox. For me, this experience is pretty much all I wanted.
showing how you are not any less intelligent, ambitious, driven, or talented within your inner beauty aspect because you want to fix something about yourself; people seem to give this mistreatment more to women than men
ending the stereotypes that everything is about dating or looking attractive on camera, or showing yourself off in revealing clothes or bikinis 24 hours a day; I always wanted to look great for myself in normal clothes, which is what I wear most of the time because Iām a normal person!
ending the concept of anything around your chest region being humiliating to talk about; I feel this a lot because right now, sharing this post is me forcing myself to be a better role model for a younger version of me; it wouldāve stopped me from restricting my food to wrecking my chest if someone had shown me what before and after ārestricting a lot to be attractive but not āeating disorderedāā dieting looks like
When I was about 15.5-16, I started losing weight because very curvy me wanted to make it in life with my true goal of landing in the entertainment industry eventually, doing whatever until then to be āpretty.ā All I ever got was early oughts era comments that wouldnāt have happened now from everywhere, every single time. Stores. Peers. The woman fixing up my music performance costume that matched the other girls saying she didnāt think my waist would be that small.
My weight loss in the beginning was a smidge. The smidge became by 16 turning to 17, full on teen movie popular girl if I didnāt go to school online, āgreat on cameraā weight loss. It was forced. As was typical with the early 2000ās, it wasnāt to be bony but the āprettyā kind of thin that was in. People told me how great I looked. Maintaining that was nearly impossible.
As a consequence, younger me wanted breast surgery to fix my newly sagging, awfully shaped breasts and began secretly hoping for it at 16 and full time by 17. Nobody ever warns you when they pose in magazines, āIām a starlet who lost weight and had surgical procedures correcting body parts I ruined from my own poor choices.ā I wasnāt a middle aged man in a cosmetic dentistās chair being warned thereās no going back from filed down teeth for crowns. I was a young person who was never told by anyone that I would ruin my chest region from basic weight loss to look better. The lie weāre all told. Lose weight. Be successful. Money will come. Power will arrive from money to do whatever you please. Restricting yourself plenty and at times with bad eating manners but not into bones isnāt an eating disorder, so what do we call it? Breast corrections were for āoldā women who had lots of kids, according to TV makeover shows, not teen girls who wrecked their bodies doing what everyone else did just fine.
If ever you watched FXās The Beauty, the very beautiful young Chloe Sevigny looking character named Bella (played by Emma Halleen) sees everyone else doing well with The Beauty makeover injection. She thinks nothing will happen to her, finding any means to get it down. Her self esteem is in the basement. She canāt see how pretty she is. Bella, after her injection, becomes a monster in the closet begging her mom for her help. Thatās me. It was certainly me crying in the middle of the night when I phoned the plastic surgeon a week later, āMy top lip is dripping disgusting smelling water and pus.ā My upper lip was gigantic. Enflamed. A big hole formed in my top right area. He arranged to meet me the next morning, early, for my first surgery removing the infection and some tissue.
It was me, crying when I saw how destroyed my chest was from simple dress size dropping when I was already a healthy dress size and good BMI, or how nothing I did post surgery one on my breasts worked out.
Whenever I have tried any makeover quick fixes, they fail. Dye my long, faded auburn hair extremely dark or platinum, it breaks. Get lip fillers at 18 at a clinic with actual Oscar winners and nominees, movie stars, as patients in my face ahead, Iām the unlucky rare one who had to have multiple reconstructive lip surgeries because I got infected. My final lip implant/revision is the lip you see today. My upper lip is just silicone wrapped with whatever is outside, because the flesh got eaten, and I removed the rest of the inside lip tissue because it was bumpy and ugly. The Hollywood celebrities didnāt get that. Their smiling faces in magazines in 2026 show me theyāre still obviously getting fillers and more done.
Losing some weight to be attractive but not skeletal when I looked fine, kind of like that Bella character, I didnāt blossom into some it girl head to toe. My breasts looked horrible. Maybe Iām just unlucky with things like Bella was.
When I was towards the second half of 17, I met the plastic surgeon who would perform my first breast correction surgery. He was very nice, funny, charming, and like a cool uncle you wished you had. I trusted him. He told me to wait until I was 18 to perform it and all was well.
Moving to go to UT Austin and having graduated early online, I was around kids my age and talking to them. It felt good being far away from negative influences and being normal. I made it a goal to eat better, meaning not either direction, and follow the way I was taught to eat right. To work out in a healthy, normal sense.
Until surgery day, age 18 and a half-ish. He told me, āI made you look natural.ā Meaning, not lifted and sculpted up to my neck. But when I looked after a week or two of healing, what looked āniceā to him looked to me like āabout to fall again.ā It fell a little. Then a lot. Then tremendously.
Because the nice first doctor was so not on the same page aesthetically, I didnāt want him to redo it. He was very āsay one thing, I do another.ā Nothing I said I wanted was done on the surgery day.
By the time I was 19, things didnāt look so good. Age 19 and a half, I looked bleak. The right side was so unevenly saggy compared to the saggy left, it was horrendous without chicken cutlets or stickers to keep everything up.
At 21, Iād lost a pinch of weight because again, I was trying to:
A) hide that mess, which made it easier because I gain and lose weight in my breasts wildly depending on how I diet down; I look merely somewhat curvy for my thinner self when I restrict my diet and really the other way when I donāt, itās crazy with the drastic difference
B) aiming not for as thin as before but a pinch improved version of me to get on camera work / modelling jobs and be taken by an agency.
Got the agency. Didnāt get the megawatt success at the time from it but some jobs. Nice. Great. Right? Happily ever after? No.
Nothing disguised it, it only made it worse. My chest just began looking so ugly, there were no words for it in my head. I was young, in what magazines and every movie said should be the prime of my ābeautifulā youth. This wasnāt supposed to happen to me.
Some āfamousā NYC surgeons were rude to 21 year old me. One refused to meet me until a few minutes prior to the surgery. No thanks!
The end of summer when I turned 22. After finding Dr. Shafer in a magazine at Duane Reade as I did my usual fun little shopping, I love convenience stores like Walgreens, I got in touch. He was friendly and welcoming, so I went in. Also welcoming was Elaine, his then office boss. He was so lovely and went over everything in detail as humiliated me felt scared to describe why I disliked things and what I wanted fixed. He promised he would fix the right side that was farther down. The scar tissue on my left side that hurt when I laid back in beauty salons to dye my hair jet black for expanding work opportunities. A lot went on. Some will remain a mystery, because I donāt need to go into details. He fixed me.
And, in fixing me, he made me feel better. I made an effort to quit caring about what people think. I told myself, if it were true that everyone got work and advanced their careers on/off camera in the arts/beyond from being ātrendy thinnerā versions of themselves, thousands if not more model-slash-actors would not be waiting tables all around LA, NYC, and London to make ends meet. So I tried to eat better on my new meatless diet that made me feel more confident and much happier and work out to look like the best version of myself. In the process, some weight gain was inevitable, and it only made my breast surgery revision results look all the more fabulous because I was back to a more improved version of my regular body type: healthy and curvier.
That my surgery results look not like they were just done last week but amazingly better, and weāre about to hit the 17th year anniversary brought on so much guilt for me not thanking Dr. Shafer with a review like this that could bring him many more satisfied patients. I saw him an article I read online and was telling myself, the least I can do is credit the gentleman who transformed my body into what it should look like through fixing one area that had gone wrong. Heās a super nice man who agreed to be an article source in some of my freelance journalism articles some years after my surgery. He is absolutely like the Matty character in 13 Going on 30 with optimism and kindness. You feel like you can tell him anything, a perfect thing for a doctor discussing these embarrassing things. Someday, once again, fingers crossed, Iāll be the big time success story I hope to be within acting, music, and filmmaking, and if/when people think I look great, part of that will be owed to Dr. Shafer fixing one bit of my whole self.
āBut itās normal! Make peace with your body. Look at women outside of mass media and Hollywood.ā Body acceptance is beautiful. Too bad. I am human. Before my first breast surgery, things were so upsetting, I wanted to cry when I saw how I messed up my body often, or avoided doing things like going to the pool when invited to work out with a girl preparing herself for a successful NCAA swimming career. I felt like even with weight gain back when I was at my university, nothing would ever fix it. There is no going back. When you destroy your chest, itās done for good. I donāt care how ānormalā it is, because bad breath is normal. You brush your teeth. Health problems that occur from not eating right are normal. You eat better. Why shouldnāt I fix a problem that bothers me if it makes me feel better to where Iām able to live my best life and feel confident, not perfect, confident in myself?
I would do it all over again, including the ugly first surgery, because it led me to a perfect result with Dr. Shafer. Had I gone to another surgeon for surgery one, it might have resulted in a so so surgery I was OK with 50-80% and never redid. Everything worked out great.
Maintaining my results might help that I practically live what I call āmummified:ā in a heavy duty sports bra whenever I can under normal or workout clothes, and in great bralettes or normal bras from Victoriaās Secret Pink when not, right back into the sports bra when Iām done. Having biological children was never for me, so that contributes to keeping things fresh looking. Standard band/cup sizing bras never fit me as Iām not shaped anywhere like a bra fit model, so my normal bras and bralettes are always XS-XXXL size chart based.
In one of the plastic surgeonsā offices where I did consults but never had a corrective second breast surgery done, pre-Dr. Shaferās redo, I met some amazing male film stars in the waiting room during the visits. Very friendly guys who were down to earth and normal, chatty. Naturally handsome who had some insecurities for whatever reasons they never said and wanted to look superhumanly handsome is my guess. They each provided me with comical over explanations of why they were there getting plastic surgery done soon as we talked for some time about fun topics afterwards. I never asked. Nobody needs an explanation. One was one of my fave movie stars who goes to some of the same businesses and medical care I do in life. If he, or anyone else, were to openly say something positive about plastic surgery experiences, my teen self, my present self, would feel a lot better.
Outing myself for this feels very scary. You arenāt supposed to talk about these things if you want a serious career or to be respected. Talking about this is for fading stars seeking a desperate magazine article or reality TV people.
Like The Beauty, some things might work for lots of people and not for you. Or those who find themselves in pickles after trying them arenāt going to tell you. The odds are scientifically high that you will be that rule, not the exception, to sagging and something going wrong with weight loss. It can never be corrected, period. Sorry. I wish someone told me.
Iām a big worrywart, so when Dr. Shafer had me do my surgery at the hospital with multiple anesthesiologists for each step and several nurses, being guided around an elevator by nurses, the whole fancy hotel experience I was surprised could be found in a hospital, it was incredible. My first surgery had been in a simple suburban plastic surgeonās office surgical suite. Iām always freaked out something is going to go wrong where I need the hospital as a precaution. A world of difference in reassurance. At the hospital, they weighed me so many times. Had my blood work. Made everything specific so nothing could go wrong. I couldnāt wear contact lenses, so everything looked mildly blurry. Squinting at Dr. Shafer post surgery made me feel silly. That was the worst I could say! Everything healed nicely. It went as great as surgery can go.
I did in my back of my mind hope I was pulled up extra tightly so when things settled, I would look great in a normal way. Whatever magic happened, it did. I look great, in a normal way, as I wanted. You donāt stare at me, but if you were to look at my body as a whole, you would only think I look nice.
Itās said that anything bad is visible in the first few months or years. If itās been 17 years soon and remains looking great, it should last for quite some more time, and probably the rest of my life if I take care of that part of me. Thank you for fixing my problem, Dr. Shafer!
