Going through puberty is never fun, and even decades later, the feelings associated with the period of growth can still sting, and longtime Inside Edition correspondent Alison Hall isn’t afraid to talk about it. Last year, Hall got the world-shaking news that she had breast cancer, and now on the other side of her double mastectomy, she’s doing a lot of reflecting. In a candid essay written for InStyle, Hall opened up about her journey with life after her breast cancer surgery, and her perspective is eye-opening.
Alison Hall Talks Puberty, Growing Up Hating Her Breasts and Adjusting to Her Body After a Double Mastectomy
“From the moment I started going through puberty, I wanted bigger breasts,” Hall began in her InStyle tell-all. “So much so that, in addition to the chant and exercises Blume inspired [she says in reference to the iconic “We must, we must, we must increase our busts” chant from Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret], I would sometimes wear two bras. Other times, I would stuff my training bra with toilet paper.” Hall went on to talk about the experience of watching her friends’ develop breasts while she was being told at modeling castings that she had “the body of a boy,” emphasizing how her relationship with her chest has been a tumultuous one since the beginning.
Just two years after Hall tied the knot, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I even wondered if this was their revenge for the adolescent years spent fighting against them and wishing they were different,” she said. “Had I not apologized enough? I imagined saying ‘I’m sorry, breasts, I love you, you can stay exactly as you are.’ But the damage was done.” As the daughter of a breast cancer survivor, Hall noted she was “obsessive” about self checks throughout her twenties, and while she was “lucky” to catch the disease early, she decided to act fast. “I made the decision pretty quickly to undergo a double mastectomy,” she explained.
So, when Hall met with her surgeon to discuss reconstruction options after her surgery, you may think she would be thrilled for the opportunity for a bigger chest size, but her experience was quite the opposite. “I had entered the conversation wanting to honor my body and asked how we could achieve the exact same size I was given by birth,” she began. “It felt like the ultimate act of self-love, to have the option of finally getting the breasts I’d long wanted and to instead ask for the ones I already had. That dream died quickly. Because of the nature of mastectomies, removing all natural breast tissue, and the shape of implants, achieving a very small chest size that looked acceptable was next to impossible.”
Hall decided to undergo chest filler procedures that use saline to periodically grow your chest before being exchanged for silicone implants, and opted for a beach vacation with her husband to assess her feelings about her “fake” breasts. While she admits that seeing her new shape was immediately gratifying, she also felt “a pang of guilt” for praising her new chest over her the one she was born with. “One chest isn’t better than the other,” Hall eventually came to understand. “My body before my mastectomy was beautiful. My body the day I woke up from my surgery was beautiful. My body with expanders was beautiful, and my body with my new implants will be beautiful too.”
