While breasts can serve as a symbol of femininity, they are not the definition of what it means to be a woman or the only way to feel feminine.
Women who choose to go flat after mastectomy exemplify beauty, empowerment, strength, badassery, love, compassion, empathy, and so much more. Femininity shines through—sans boobs.
Still illustrates this truth through photography and storytelling—to show how women who make this reconstruction choice are STILL themselves—still strong, still beautiful…and so much more.
Still is an Aesthetic Flat Closure (AFC) advocacy project that creates awareness of AFC as a mastectomy reconstruction choice, and promotes flat visibility and body positivity.
What’s that look like? It starts with creating a collection of diverse stories and images of women who chose to go flat after mastectomy. And it culminates in the design of publication and poster show featuring these stories and images to create enduring AFC visibility.
The Publication
This collection of stories and images will be featured in a beautifully designed and produced publication.
This publication will be available in digital and print formats and will be shared by:
Participants and the creative team on social media
AFC promoting organizations who will be given access to the publication to use in their own advocacy work
Healthcare providers to share with their patients
The Poster Show
A traveling poster show is also in the works!
The show will include large format posters featuring participant’s images, their stories, and a video about the project.
Why Still?
I found out about Aesthetic Flat Closure from flatties who had the courage to share their experiences and what it looks like to be flat. Showing and telling our stories helps others. Still will take this to a new level.
—Lisa
Hi, I’m Lisa from @sothisisflat. I remember finding out I had a soaring risk of getting breast cancer. I remember choosing a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy to manage that risk. And I remember the discussions with doctors about how I would ‘put myself back together again’.
Was it going to be implants? Flap surgery? These were eagerly offered but I had looming concerns about each. Neither felt right for me. That’s when I found another option, on my own, called Aesthetic Flat Closure—going flat.
More and more women are choosing to go flat after mastectomy but it’s still not always offered, or done well. A common trope women are fed is that we cannot be ourselves, whole, feminine, happy—without breasts.
But the brave flat women who openly share their stories and photos on social media told me a different story—one of incredible beauty, confidence, strength.
Can you imagine seeing a book in your doctor’s office that shows beautiful, empowering flat women?
Can you imagine what it would feel like to see what flat might look like for someone your age, color, and body type?
Can you imagine what it would feel like to read their stories and identify with them because your story has similarities?
I imagine it would be profoundly hope-giving, inspiring, and empowering for those of us facing these decisions.
AFC needs to be talked about, offered, and seen as a viable, beautiful reconstruction option so that those making reconstruction decisions don’t have to work so hard to figure it out, like I did. Like many others have.
Going flat needs to be normalized, flat women need to be seen, and body positivity needs to be promoted.
Still will work to do just that.
The Photoshoot
Magic was created on September 7 at Amy Rose Productions where twelve Still Flatties and Still’s exceptionally talented team created the images that will be featured in the Still publication and poster show.
This group of flatties represents incredible diversity of age, size, and color—each with a unique and compelling story of their journey to flat. They are survivors and previvors, people who explanted and went straight to flat, with and without mastectomy tattoos, with a range different scar types.
Each flattie has a Still Phrase which captures the unique way they are still themselves after going flat. The photos beautifully, strikingly, and emphatically communicate this…how they are still beYOUtiful, still fierce, still resilient, still living, still sexy, still stylin’, still in process, still fucking going, that it’s still my body, I’m still me, and I am stronger still.
Collectively, these images deliver an uplifiting and powerful message for those facing mastectomies and making reconstruction choices—and for the world at large… That those of us who go flat after mastectomy are Still ourselves. That flat is beautiful inside and out.