As a small-breasted woman, my boobs have rarely been ogled. Yet this year I’ve noticed people staring at my chest. At the dog park a woman who stopped to chat spent the entire time with her eyes locked well south of my chin, like those sleazy tit-talkers whom big-busted women complain about.
I wanted to say, “Go on, ask me, where has my breast gone?” But I didn’t, because then I’d have to answer my own question. And telling people you have cancer is exhausting, eliciting a mix of pity and fear, where you know what they really want to ask is: Are you going to die? Or, as one acquaintance boldly put it: “Is it the sort they can treat, or the other sort?”
