Elinor Carucci photographed Melissa Febos for the The New York Times Magazine's Heath Issue. Febos writes about how her body had been objectified for as long as she could remember. So she decided to change it, and got a breast reduction: “For most of my life, I desperately wanted my body to be different, and I also understood the obsession as a shortcoming — as a failure to be a real feminist. I thought that I needed to accept my body, to love my body and find it beautiful, to successfully reject the internalized messaging of the patriarchal culture. My shame signified a personal failure at this. It never occurred to me that my problem was also material and social. I could accept and love my body entirely and men would still yell at me out of car windows, grope me in public, make assumptions about my intelligence and sexual availability. My perception of myself could never be entirely sealed off from other peoples’ perceptions of me."
Elinor Carucci for The New York Times Magazine
Melissa Febos in 2022, after her surgery
10 May 2022
