Eden Sassoon Reveals Why She Removed Her Breast Implants After 20 Years

I was 14 when I got my period. I was an A cup. I don’t think I thought of it until that female-male relationship [mind-set] started to kick in and I felt that I wasn’t enough. I had long hair, and I would put it over my boobs. The way my nipples were formed weren’t these tiny, little things. I felt like I had torpedo boobs. My father never commented on my breasts, but I did ask my mom and my sister why their boobs looked different from mine, and they said, "Well, we both had ours done." From that point, I think I thought, This is it, this is who I am. They did this, I’m going to have to do mine.

I really struggled with wanting to get implants. I went to my stepmom and told her, and then I had to get to my dad, because he would always let my sister do all these things to fix her, to help her, to be better. God forbid his little girl, who was like the perfect one and quiet and shy and didn’t do drugs, [wanted this] because he would have to pay for it! He said, "I’ll do this, but I have to know you're serious. If it’s going to make you feel better about yourself, then let’s talk about why." My stepmom suggested I wear a padded bra for two weeks, but it was so uncomfortable I was like, "Get this off me!" But I said I’d do whatever they wanted me to do because I wanted these boobs.

I was about 19 when I got breast implants. Now my girlfriends are getting them in their forties, and I’m getting mine out. This is ass-backward! I’m like, "Aren’t you more comfortable with who you are? You need that to help you?" Post-surgery, after I removed my implants, I sat there thinking, This is amazing! I could have done this 20 years ago, but I didn’t! And yet, through those years, the first 20 years, I loved my boobs—the fake boobs. I didn’t have a problem with the silicone. Back then I was like, "Just put them in!" I just wanted to look normal. I was an A, and the surgeon put me to a full B/C. I didn’t go crazy. I just wanted to be a proportionate, normal woman. I didn’t want to be that girl. No, never.

The second time I had the original implants replaced I realized my body was fighting them. I'd think, Why aren’t you listening to your body? And I’d be like, "But I want to look good!" But this one boob just kept getting hard. The surgeon said, "Well, I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t put it back in the same area, so I put it under your muscle." I was like, "You have one under the muscle and one over the muscle?" Then, in the first two weeks [after the second surgery], I could feel it getting hard again. And it’s under the muscle. And they were lopsided! I had a great doctor, but it was my body saying, "Go f-ck yourself. You’re done." But it took a long time to realize.