There are fewer more treacherous territories to navigate than attempting to get out of going to one of your best friend’s birthday parties. You could be going through the worst breakup of you life, have just been fired or suddenly struck down with a case of the ebola, but there’s an unwritten girl rule that whatever it is you’re going through, you have to pull it together and make up the numbers for your mate on her special day.
Of course I know the rules, which is why is was so harrowing to find myself in exactly this situation last weekend, grappling with the impossible task of writing my best friend in the world a text message to let her know that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to her 27th birthday party.
The reason I have no spare cash is because I’m saving up nearly £6,000 so I can get a boob job this summer and every spare penny I earn is going into a saving account to make that a reality...
The truth is that I really wanted to go, but I was so broke that I couldn't even afford the £1.45 bus fair to get myself from East to Central London, let alone the £10 I’d have to dish out on the door of the club and the £3.00 I’d have to pay per (soft) drink. But before you phone my boss and demand I get a pay rise, I’m not broke because I’m badly paid (I love my job and am on £28K a year, which is hardly a pittance), nor am I broke because my rent is too high and I have a mountain of debt (my rent is £500 a month and I’ve never had a credit card).
The reason I have no spare cash is because I’m saving up nearly £6,000 so I can get a boob job this summer and every spare penny I earn is going into a saving account to make that a reality. Not that my best friend would understand that - which is why I told her that I had the shits.
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Because the truth is that, despite the fact that Weymouth Street Hospital recently released statistics that showed that more and more people are opting to go under the knife for cosmetic procedures this January, my desire to get work done has always been met, at best, with ironic eye rolling or, at worst, hurtfully scathing remarks from the people closest to me.
Wanting bigger boobs is the domain of WAGs, porn stars or the terminally insecure, they all say, so why does an intelligent, successful and outwardly confident person like me want to mess around with the body she’s born with? Even my with my very best friends - who all say they’d rather I didn’t do it but will support me whatever I decided - I can’t help but feel judged. Can’t I learn my small boobs the way they are and just learn to mask my insecurities with clever dressing like we all do?
Well the simple answer is no, which is why I’ve been lying to my friends and family for months and have booked myself into a Harley Street surgery this June to get implants that will take me from a from 32A/B to a 32D.
When all of my girl mates were revelling in their new bodies, hiking their round, pert boobs up around their eyeballs at any given opportunity and enjoying attention from guys heady with post-balls dropping hormones, my flat-chest always made me feel left out...
I’ve wanted to get a breast enlargement since I was 16 years-old. When all of my girl mates were revelling in their new bodies, hiking their round, pert boobs up around their eyeballs at any given opportunity and enjoying attention from guys heady with post-balls dropping hormones, my flat-chest always made me feel left out. I would go home from school every night praying that my body would provide me with something, anything to fill up the training bra my mum bought me out of sympathy rather than any kind of necessity (other than balls of tissue, of course) but nothing ever really happened.
Nearly a decade later and I was still waiting and the insecurity I was feeling had successfully ruined two relationships (I’ve always found sex difficult because I’m too self conscious to get fully naked in front of the guys I’m with) and it felt like I needed to take matters into my own hands. I started researching breast augmentation surgery and discovered it wasn’t cheap - over £5,000 at reputably surgeries with more cost incurred through consultations - but I knew instantly it was what I needed to do to feel more confident about my body. It was shit tonnes of money - enough to potentially secure my future - but it was worth saving for in my eyes. I couldn’t carry on the way I was.
So two years ago the decision was made, but now I actually had to save up the money, which has been a hell of a lot more difficult than I could ever have anticipated. First things first, I sold a huge chunk of my worldly possessions every item of designer clothing I owned. I’d got most of it through work for free, but they were my pride and joy and lots of them were priceless to me. When I packed up the Miu Miu dress which I had worn to both my graduation, my mum’s wedding and my first date with my ex-boyfriend I locked myself in my bedroom and watched the Notebook on repeat for an entire weekend. After a lot of heartache and even more hours spent going mad in the post office, I managed to make just over £2,000.
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It was good, but it was nowhere near enough and the rest of the money was simply going to have to come from my wage, which was already stretched to the limit as it was thanks to expensive London transport, rent and my social life. Some stuff was going to have to change.
First off, I decided I was going to walk to and from work, which saved me a fortune but meant I lost quite a lot of weight and my boobs shrunk from a B to an A. Not a great start. Then I decided that I needed to stop going out as much and probably needed to stop drinking.
At first, I became a total hermit in case I was tempted to blow £80 on a few bottles of wine by my boozy mates, but soon enough I got the courage to go and and would just pretend there was vodka in the all the lime and sodas I was drinking. There’s nothing quite like being the only sober person in a room full of piss heads to make you reconsider how much your breasts really mean to you, but I was determined.
So determined that, whilst all of my friends were having an amazing time (and amazing sex) on Tinder, I didn’t bother getting the app on because I didn’t want to have to risk going Dutch on a Tinder date and eating out was out of the question for the time being. Of course, this all meant I lost even more bloody weigh so my boobs shrunk even more, but the end was in sight and I slowly saw my savings grow even if my boobs were resolutely determined not to.
I had to wonder - how much of my current life was I willing to give up to make sure that my future self was happy?
The only time I felt genuinely tempted to give the whole thing up was when I missed out on my entire friendship group going to Worldwide festival for two weeks so I could count my pennies in the UK and go on a caravan holiday in Dorset with my nan. As I looked out over the grey, English sky whilst I played one more game of backgammon, they uploaded picture upon picture of themselves looking bronzed, happy and like they were having the time of their lives. I had to wonder - how much of my current life was I willing to give up to make sure that my future self was happy?
I still don’t know the answer the that question, but I will soon find out. If anything, all this sacrifice and diligent saving has just made me more determined to follow through with my plan and inject some much needed confidence back in my life. Beside, next year all the saving will be over and I’ll be able to enjoy the 20-something life I feel like I’ve been missing out on up until this point - big boobs and all.
*As Told to sophiecullinane
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.