“I babysit my grandchildren a lot, and if you just wear external prostheses, at the moment when you lift a child and especially in the summer months, everything will hang forward. It will get loose, you’re sweating, you hear it every time when they flap back like ‘flush’, a really strange sound […] And you don’t want to get your grandchildren a trauma because of that, it’s weird enough that your grandmother does not have boobs. So that’s why [I will have a reconstruction].”

Beatrix had a breast amputation and wears an external prosthesis, but is scheduled for having a surgical breast reconstruction. She was interviewed for our study on women’s expectations of a breast reconstruction.

Picture: Iiu Susiraja, from Self Portraits series