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CHIDERA EGGERUE IS on a mission. A mission to challenge society’s idealistic view of what ‘perfect’ breasts mean: Eggerue wants the world to embrace their saggy boobs.
Yes, you in the back snickering, you heard that correctly – ‘embrace your saggy boobs’!
Usually associated with offhand comments about grannies or what happens after you have kids, saggy boobs are the butt of many an ageist joke about women’s bodies when they go past their supposed ‘prime’ years.
Based off the images we see in the media, it appears that everyone has perfectly perky boobs. We’re bombarded with celebrities who have won the genetic lottery, in terms of what the ‘perfect’ standard of boobs are, or celebrities who have had breast augmentations to fit that beauty standard. The image of perfection that is fed to us, means that the girls and young women who have boobs that hang low and ‘sag’ can feel ashamed of their perfectly normal bodies.
And that feeling of universal shame is exactly what 23-year-old Londoner, Chidera Eggerue, wants to target. Through her online social media campaign #SaggyBoobsMatter, Eggerue wants society to rethink their perception of what boobs should look like to be deemed ‘attractive’. In her own words, Eggerue is:
>reclaiming ownership of every single negative connotation attached to what it means to have “saggy boobs”. I think the word saggy is just an adjective and we are the ones who determine if it’s negative or positive.
Eggerue has said that she was inspired to create the movement when she realised that she was not alone in her teenage experience of hating her saggy boobs, but that she was unusual in, not merely accepting them, but growing to love them.
She says that a lack of representation of saggy-looking boobs, when Eggerue first went bra-shopping, sparked insecurities in her. Like many young girls going through the awkward transition of child to woman, she felt pressure to look like the ‘perfect’ models who adorned the packaging material of bras i.e. slim, white, and with round, perky boobs.
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Eggerue says that her insecurities became so bad that she decided to save for a boob job as soon as she got her first job. Breast augmentations are one of the most common surgeries in Ireland and the most googled, so she was by no means alone in her desire to change her body through surgery. However, aged 19, something inside of Eggerue clicked: she realised she’d wasted her formative teenage years despising the body she lived in and it dawned on her that she didn’t want to waste any more time continuing to loath her own body.
She decided to begin a conversation about ‘saggy’ boobs, and so the movement #SaggyBoobsMatter was born.
“Oh wonderful”, I hear you say, “yet another positive and empowering message for young girls and women, told through one woman’s journey of self-discovery and overcoming evil media marketing. Pass the tissues. When’s the movie coming out?”
But it’s easy to dismiss this message of self-love if you aren’t the one with boobs that, because they are ‘saggy’, are seen as unattractive.
I’ve had an overwhelmingly warm, amazing response, specifically from very young teenagers who have told me that when they came across the hashtag it actually stopped them from attending a consultation with a plastic surgeon, which was amazing to hear.
Chidera adds that what’s really warmed her heart has been helping new mothers whose breasts have changed as a result of pregnancy and breastfeeding to see themselves in a more beautiful light:
(it’s been) heartfilling receiving messages from breastfeeding mothers telling me that this hashtag has allowed them to feel more beautiful during such a beautiful process, such an amazing process of breastfeeding your child, that not many women are able to partake in…
…and it’s a shame that you feel ashamed for your body changing during such a short period of time cause you feel like you’ve lost ownership and control, but it’s something you should actually enjoy and I’m really glad that I’ve been able to contribute to another women feeling more comfortable.
However, Eggerue has also had pushback to her body positive movement. In January, she was body shamed by one of the biggest names of Afrobeats, a Nigerian music producer who has 3 million followers.
I love being body shamed and slandered by Nigerian musicians.
Eggerue, despite the strong self-acceptance she has grown to have in her body, was hurt with the online reaction to the meme. Expressing disappointment in the meme and that so many strangers online were openly laughing at her body made things worse, and Eggerue was subsequenty called an attention-seeker and told to get over it as it wasn’t a big deal. Eggerue said of the experience:
No matter how much you love yourself, randomly seeing strangers laugh at your body is not a nice feeling at all. Cyberbullying does not stop being cyberbullying just because a person is popular/famous.
However, like many of today’s millenial activists, Eggerue didn’t take the online abuse lying down. Instead, she turned the online negative abuse of her body on its head and continued to cultivate her online movement that not only accepted but embraced her individual beauty.
By force, we will all have to learn that the only way to normalise something is to see it repeatedly…For the women who look like me: Your saggy boobs matter. And from now until you die, what’s going to matter, ultimately, is your character.
At the heart of #SaggyBoobsMatter, is the message that women should have informed agency to do what they want and to accept themselves as they are
Eggerue is keen to say that this movement is not about judging women who choose to have breast surgery, and she strongly believes that women should have the agency to do want they want with their body.
However, she cautions that getting a breast augmentation is oftentimes avoiding the insecurities that lie at the root of wanting to have surgery to ‘fix’ a certain body part.
As much as I do believe women deserve absolute agency over their bodies and that if they do choose to get a breast augmentation, that’s completely up to them I do feel however that a lot of the time it’s a shortcut to accepting yourself because what we don’t realise about insecurities is that it’s something of the mind and if you don’t learn to view yourself as someone who’s wholesome and deserving to be here (the surgery won’t solve your problems).
As Eggerue has said, and as the below message she received shows, sometimes girls and young women just need a sprinkling of self-confidence in order to accept the individual features that make them unique.
via Buzzfeed
via Buzzfeed
Eggrue’s book, What a Time to be Alone: The Slumflower’s guide to why you are already enough, is out this July but you can preorder now on Amazon. In the meantime, you can check out her blog.
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Wednesday 18 December, 2024
Wednesday 18 December, 2024
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The #SaggyBoobsMatter movement is inspiring women to cancel plastic surgery
Yes, you in the back snickering, you heard that correctly – ‘embrace your saggy boobs’!
Usually associated with offhand comments about grannies or what happens after you have kids, saggy boobs are the butt of many an ageist joke about women’s bodies when they go past their supposed ‘prime’ years.
Based off the images we see in the media, it appears that everyone has perfectly perky boobs. We’re bombarded with celebrities who have won the genetic lottery, in terms of what the ‘perfect’ standard of boobs are, or celebrities who have had breast augmentations to fit that beauty standard. The image of perfection that is fed to us, means that the girls and young women who have boobs that hang low and ‘sag’ can feel ashamed of their perfectly normal bodies.
And that feeling of universal shame is exactly what 23-year-old Londoner, Chidera Eggerue, wants to target. Through her online social media campaign #SaggyBoobsMatter, Eggerue wants society to rethink their perception of what boobs should look like to be deemed ‘attractive’. In her own words, Eggerue is:
YAS QUEEN
Eggerue has said that she was inspired to create the movement when she realised that she was not alone in her teenage experience of hating her saggy boobs, but that she was unusual in, not merely accepting them, but growing to love them.
She says that a lack of representation of saggy-looking boobs, when Eggerue first went bra-shopping, sparked insecurities in her. Like many young girls going through the awkward transition of child to woman, she felt pressure to look like the ‘perfect’ models who adorned the packaging material of bras i.e. slim, white, and with round, perky boobs.
Eggerue says that her insecurities became so bad that she decided to save for a boob job as soon as she got her first job. Breast augmentations are one of the most common surgeries in Ireland and the most googled, so she was by no means alone in her desire to change her body through surgery. However, aged 19, something inside of Eggerue clicked: she realised she’d wasted her formative teenage years despising the body she lived in and it dawned on her that she didn’t want to waste any more time continuing to loath her own body.
She decided to begin a conversation about ‘saggy’ boobs, and so the movement #SaggyBoobsMatter was born.
“Oh wonderful”, I hear you say, “yet another positive and empowering message for young girls and women, told through one woman’s journey of self-discovery and overcoming evil media marketing. Pass the tissues. When’s the movie coming out?”
But it’s easy to dismiss this message of self-love if you aren’t the one with boobs that, because they are ‘saggy’, are seen as unattractive.
In conversation with Eamonn Holmes last week, Eggerue spoke of the reaction she’s had to #SaggyBoobsMatter:
Chidera adds that what’s really warmed her heart has been helping new mothers whose breasts have changed as a result of pregnancy and breastfeeding to see themselves in a more beautiful light:
However, Eggerue has also had pushback to her body positive movement. In January, she was body shamed by one of the biggest names of Afrobeats, a Nigerian music producer who has 3 million followers.
Eggerue, despite the strong self-acceptance she has grown to have in her body, was hurt with the online reaction to the meme. Expressing disappointment in the meme and that so many strangers online were openly laughing at her body made things worse, and Eggerue was subsequenty called an attention-seeker and told to get over it as it wasn’t a big deal. Eggerue said of the experience:
However, like many of today’s millenial activists, Eggerue didn’t take the online abuse lying down. Instead, she turned the online negative abuse of her body on its head and continued to cultivate her online movement that not only accepted but embraced her individual beauty.
At the heart of #SaggyBoobsMatter, is the message that women should have informed agency to do what they want and to accept themselves as they are
Eggerue is keen to say that this movement is not about judging women who choose to have breast surgery, and she strongly believes that women should have the agency to do want they want with their body.
However, she cautions that getting a breast augmentation is oftentimes avoiding the insecurities that lie at the root of wanting to have surgery to ‘fix’ a certain body part.
As Eggerue has said, and as the below message she received shows, sometimes girls and young women just need a sprinkling of self-confidence in order to accept the individual features that make them unique.
Eggrue’s book, What a Time to be Alone: The Slumflower’s guide to why you are already enough, is out this July but you can preorder now on Amazon. In the meantime, you can check out her blog.
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