How Still Started

Still was inspired by Lisa Taft Sylvester from @sothisisflat. While on a walk with a Stand Tall AFC team at the Walk for CancerCare in Lowell MA, a flattie commented that they wanted a billboard to show people what Aesthetic Flat Closure is. And Lisa thought, I can do that—maybe not via a billboard, but in other ways that will create visibility and help women.

Lisa is co-owner of Interrobang Design, an award winning and internationally published strategic brand development and graphic design firm.

Through her design work, Lisa has been communicating information and messages to targeted audiences for over 35 years. She knows design’s power to impart information, impact lives, and build connections. She’s seen it time and again—design moves mountains. 

Lisa and Mark, her partner in life and design, have had the privilege of collaborating with wildly talented and creative colleagues through Interrobang’s work.

When Lisa asked a group of these friends if they’d be interested in helping bring Still to life, the answer was a resounding YES!

Meet the Creative Team

Still’s Goals

  • Show flat people thriving

  • Share their stories

  • Create awareness of AFC as a safe, healthy, and beautiful option for mastectomy patients

  • Help those facing difficult decisions by providing hope, inspiration, and empowerment.

  • Promote body positivity

  • Promote AFC visibility

  • Normalize flat in the general public

FOUNDER’S NOTE

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 takes this to a new level.

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 people 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 do.

Still does just that.

—Lisa

How Still is Funded?

Well, it isn’t actually. Still is what we call a no-money-fun project. Simply put, a no-money-fun project is what happens when creative friends who love to work together come up with an idea, and then make it happen—without being money being involved.

Why? Because it enables untethered and innovative creativity with few parameters like a client brief or budget. The process is rewarding. The result, inspirational.

The entire Still creative team is donating their time and talent. The motivation for this project simply isn’t money. Still is happening through collective and incredibly deep generosity—and the drive to create something meaningful.

Still is happening through collective and incredibly deep generosity—and the drive to create something meaningful.