is waif
IMPERFECTLY PERFECT
My love journey starts in the 90 ́s; Angelina Jolie, Pamela Anderson, Christina Aguilera, Heidi Klum, Pocahontas, my mom. damn how I loved their curves! my biggest dream was to follow the colors of the wind to Hollywood one day, shaking my hips like Shakira and fighting monsters with my boobs like Angelina. unfortunately my name was neither Pocahontas, nor Shakira or Angelina, but Leandra.
do you know these magazines that you find in a doctors waiting room? well, my hippie parents didn’t allow them in the house but certainly I loved my friends parents for buying them. my parents were these kind, who get the organic box from the farmers market delivered every week with dark bread, rice milk and seed poppies, so also the shopping catalogues we got sent home, as this was the time before online shopping, were all full of sustainable organic hemp clothes. still they had an underwear section and I immediately zoomed to these pages. I could not stop looking at the gorgeous big round boobs on all pages I was so excited to grow up and also have boobs and being able to order all these pretty bras and bikinis. soon I grew up. but there were no boobs. and I waited. and waited. and still no boobs. only growing tall real quick so I was called: hockey player. musketeer and leandrathaler and to be suspected to have out of control bones, as I was unusual tall.
“why did you only make a B cup? F is sooooo much better! Arnold Schwarzenegger will never date you like this!”
as i didn’t get any growing on my chest, I ordered bras with patting. patting is basically like putting socks on your chest, but already sewed in. so they look like big like pillows or airbags and i wore them day and night so none could ever find out my „little lie“ . but then i got scared to wear them at a date. what if we get along well and then he asks me to go home with him and then we make out and then he wants to take off my bra and...... realized its all fake and i have no boobs??? so i still dated of course. and went with the boys it didnʼt really work out anyways; my parents had just separated, so my mother - an ultra feminist, reading feminax and walkürax instead of asterix and obelix, having jokes about men on the fridge door instead of magnets from the Eiffel tower like my friend ́s parents and only going to women's bookshops with literature about how to hate men - was telling me on a daily basis why i shouldnʼt get involved with the other gender. i would get left behind, disappointed, and screwed over by
these mean creatures. the years went on and slowly my little sister began to grow up and from one night to another as it seemed, her chest exploded. she supposingly had inherited our moms and grannies genes while it seemed like the genes had missed me. so unfair. why me? i wasnʼt the best in math but my calculations went from: both grandparents in DD Cup, mother in E cup, sister in D cup, honestly all aunts with minimum C-D, the probability calculation saved the exception of the rule for me.
so the years went on and on and I was working as a fashion photographer first, then I was discovered as a model as I was still overly tall and skinny as always. I had stopped looking at the magazines but at REAL peoples naked bodies. models with real perfect breasts and was looking at them legally all day by photoshopping them even rounder and bigger and putting an oily shiny glance on them. then Instagram and Facebook came into my life. more boobs, asses, meat, bikinis, skin, flesh, bras, models, breasts……
and the years went on and on, and suddenly i met a man that i allowed to look at my naked chest. with his hands touching it, he would change my life forever. an man who would give me an anesthesia and cut a thin long line under my nipple. a man who pushed 215 gramm of silicone under each of my my breast muscles. a man who sewed me up. a man who just did his daily routine, working 5 days a week to make women happy.
waking up 4 hours later, i felt an incredible pain, but hip hip hurray, i looked down on my bandaged body and... couldn’t see my tummy anymore. goal reached, thanks to 215 gramm of silicone was finally a full woman! that night i dreamt of all the wonderful bikinis and bras without padding i would order once i would be fully healed.
if you don’t want the implants to end up under your armpit, you ́re not supposed to move your arms up for the first two weeks, so i was happy to invite friends every evening to cook dinner for me and tell them about my sudden womanhood as a surprise. so my first excited question when i opened the door was always; do you notice i look different? they were confused and even more confused when i buttoned open my shirt and an ugly compression bra showed. my friends who had known me for various years didn't notice a difference. I began to struggle: i expected to be looked at as a grown up curvy superstar now, ready to go to Hollywood. but in my dreams pamela anderson showed up to me and was yelling at me: why did you only make a B cup? F is sooooo much better! Arnold Schwarzenegger will never date you like this!
I kept on spending more and more time on instagram and became more and more unsatisfied. if i could have chosen every size on this planet, why did i not get a proper one? should i go for round 2 in the silicone battle? how about 300 grams?
the years went on and on. i was looking down at my chest with discontent and still did not dare to go braless. what if men would notice its fake? what if they touched it and they could obviously feel its hard as my bones on the same spot before that?
only my bikinis i had ordered somehow fit better than before, so i decided to
take them out on a journey, which ended up being a journey in a direction I had not imagined before. a journey that was only supposed to go to Bali, evolved into a journey right into my heart, my soul, my past, my future. healers say Bali is one of the earth’s chakra points and the energy therefore very intense and cleansing, which i had absolutely no doubt about, once getting there. the stunning waterfalls. the crickets at night. the fullest of all full moons. the fresh and delicious food. the never ending green rice fields. a paradise. but you can be in the most beautiful paradise, if you have a hell inside of yourself, you can ́t see it. i had restless nights in my lovely villa, thinking about the inefficiency of my shameful body. wanting to cry every time a saw myself in the mirror. hating myself for how i looked and at the same time about what i had done already to modify it. i suddenly realized my whole life lie: my mother had made me hate men so much, that I started to hate the male part inside of me. I hated myself so much, that I thought by changing my appearance I could love myself. I thought, I could get my moms love and the love and recognition by men. I wanted to be perfect in a perfect Instagram world. I wanted to find love on the outside while I couldnʼt find it on the inside. i knew i could not live on like that. that was the moment i realized that even if i ́d look like pocahontas, even if i had a D, E or F cup, i would not be able to love myself then, if i ́d not love myself now.
what do you do when you want to go through a transformation on bali? right: you book the next meditation and yoga class and start eating vegan. you book a tantra class and cacao ceremony and look out for the best coaches. i might sound like a spiritual organic hipster now, but these tools are very powerful and I slowly came to accept myself. I suddenly saw that there was no more need to perfection, because I was already perfect. perfect, because nature makes no mistakes. perfect, because perfect is not about a cup size. perfect because i am not my bra size. i am a should and spirit inhabiting a human body to make experiences on this planet. and i certainly don ́t mean surgery experiences. it was probably the most challenging time in my life and i could feel layers and layers of old believes and limitations falling of me like pieces of clothing, stripping me naked down to my skinny bony body with yet big boobs. making it each time more acceptable to look in the mirror.
so suddenly I knew it would not have been the last time I saw the man who makes the women happy. I had to face this man one more time to truly become happy and purely perfect. pure like nature. like the full moon and the waterfall and the rice fields and pure like my spirit.
the doctor had never seen a more cheerful person in his surgery room before a surgery. I smiled up to him, looking forward to have him cut open my chest, have him rip out these hard pillows, sewing me up again. knowing in a few hours I’d be leandra again. not pocahontas, not pamela, not angelina. just leandra.
when I woke up hip hip hurray, I could see my belly again and I touched my soft yet empty chest. I never realized that breasts can be so wonderful soft and sensitive. I was looking forward to order unpadded soft bras, supporting the little soft flesh that was left. that afternoon I left the clinic with two implants in my hand and happy smile on my face.
my breasts do not look like the ones I used to photograph and photoshop, but I love them more than ever because I love myself. I love and embrace every part of my body, including my male part. I love not wearing padded bras anymore and I love going on dates with men who are not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
happy Valentine’s day to me and to you precious human being, because love starts with the love to the person you should love and marry before anyone else: yourself! (and does not end with your bra size).