Social Considerations
Extremely large breasts, also known as macromastia or gigantomastia, are a source of considerable attention. Some women try to hide or mask their breasts with special clothing, including minimizing brassieres. Females may be subject to psychological problems due to unwanted attention and/or harassment. Depression is common among sufferers.
In the case of a 12-year-old Japanese girl reported in 1993, her "massively enlarged" breasts caused her "intense psychological problems, incapacitating her in school activities and social relations." Actress Soleil Moon Frye, who starred as a child in the sitcom Punky Brewster, reported in an interview with People magazine that boys taunted her, calling her "Hey, Punky Boobster!" It affected her professional and social life negatively. "People started to think of me as a bimbo," she said in the interview. "I couldn't sit up straight without people looking at me like I was a prostitute," Frye said.
Finding large bra sizes and styles that fit is challenging. Also, larger bras are more costly, challenging to find, and unflattering to the wearer. Ill-fitting bras with narrow straps can cause chronic irritation, redness, and indentations in the shoulders. Skin rashes under the breasts are common, particularly during warm weather. Heavy breasts may cause headaches, neck pain, upper and lower back pain, and numbness or tingling in the fingers.
Many definitions of macromastia and gigantomastia are based on the term of "excessive breast tissue", and are therefore somewhat arbitrary, as excessive tissue can often be regarded only from an aesthetic viewpoint and not from a medical one. Breasts of human females developed only under the aesthetic selection, as can be deducted by comparison to the breasts of other related primates. The size of the breasts is not related to their functionality, and therefore almost all human breast tissue is excessive from a functional viewpoint. In other words, the line between "just big breasts" and a medical condition is an individual one, as long as there are no ulcerations or other disease-related observations present. This is also the reason many health insurance companies refuse to pay for reduction surgeries when there are only psychological but no strong physical impairments. The current definitions are dependent on society and surgeons' perception of normal and beautiful breast size and may be subject to change in the future.
Read more about this topic: Hypertrophy Of Breast
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