Boobs Are The New Face

Not to sound like a pervert, but recently I had lunch with a person I know medium-well, and I couldn’t help but ogle her boobs. They had noticeably gone from good to remarkable — basically perfect. I told her as much. (Admiring our friends makes perverts of us all.) I didn’t go so far as to ask her why they looked noticeably remarkable, though I left her space to tell me. (She did not.)

Later, after lunch, I’ll admit, I supersleuthed on her Instagram to see if it was just a good bra or some sort of miracle turtleneck, or a TikTok styling tip I’d missed, or if she’d done something more permanent. (It’s 2025: We don’t comment on each other’s bodies, but we can admit to furiously trying to figure out what work someone might have done, nonjudgmentally.) It was clear she’d done something, but what, I couldn’t tell. It couldn’t be a full-on boob job; she had been out and about too much to do anything that required extensive downtime. I was about to accept “magic wand,” until the search terms “boob job no downtime” and “boob job no surgery” led me down the rabbit hole of nonsurgical breast augmentation. And at the bottom of that rabbit hole, there were three little words: the Cleavage Clinic. A cleverly named med spa — like the Cleveland Clinic… but for breasts! — in midtown New York that opened last year with a singular mission: to give you the perfect pair of boobs on your lunch break by using quick non-surgical procedures usually used for your face.

What is the perfect boob these days? (Trick question. All of them.) But from a plastic surgery trend perspective, even though breast augmentations are still the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure (about 300,000 are performed annually in the United States), there’s been a shift in what people want for their boobs. Plastic surgeons are fielding more requests to remove large implants; patients are requesting smaller ones. Now, instead of the Jessica Rabbit and Pamela Anderson cup size that dominated the 1990s and 2000s, people want smaller, more natural breasts: “yoga boobs,” or “Pilates boobs,” or as one of the Cleavage Clinic co-founders, Bri Tomaselli, calls them, “permanent period boobs.” While there are still some requests for traditional implants, this moment’s aesthetic preference can be accomplished with other methods, and that’s the Cleavage Clinic’s specialty. Since opening a year ago, it’s been booked and busy, according to Tomaselli. They are already discussing expansion to other states.

Because I am single and living the life of someone 10 years younger, I feel that I should have breasts of someone 10 years younger.

The idea for the breast-centric med spa emerged when Tomaselli, who is the personification of popular-girl handwriting, and Noelle Villella, who gives captain-of-the-volleyball-team popular, met in the Hamptons in 2022. Par for the course in that tony scene, the conversation drifted toward cosmetic surgery procedures. Neither of them are doctors, but they both had industry backgrounds: Tomaselli had worked with a large med spa chain in the South, helping it open new locations, and Villella was a medical-surgical nurse before transitioning to aesthetics. Crucially, they’re also both larger-breasted women who had disappointing experiences with their own attempts at procedures. Tomaselli got a breast reduction surgery in 2017 to alleviate back pain and wasn’t happy with the outcome. She felt like they’d removed too much tissue, but she wasn’t interested in the corrective options like breast implants. Villella was similarly disinterested in the surgical route; she’d wanted a breast lift since college, but she didn’t want the scarring. They quickly realized the way their desires and backgrounds aligned made them a perfect pair (pun intended).

They started doing their research and spent two years investigating treatments that were used for things like anti-aging or BBLs, as well as training with different doctors to learn how to perform the services they wanted to offer. Many of those treatments — PRP therapy (that’s platelet-rich plasma, popular in hair-growth treatments and “vampire” facials), Sculptra (a dermal filler used on fine lines and wrinkles), radiofrequency microneedling — are almost exclusively used in facial procedures, but the two realized the same technology would work for breast enhancement as well. (Are breasts the new face?)

“We both had it in ourselves that we wanted options for nonsurgical enhancements to make our breasts look better, and we knew other people wanted that as well,” says Villella of the aha moment. Currently, the people who want to explore these options seem to be people who have stumbled upon their business on social media — influencers make up a substantial demographic. Also: Bravolebrities (though which ones, they will not name); new moms who thought they would want implants but actually can’t spare the downtime postpartum; and anyone who wants a quick confidence boost in a bathing suit.

“Do you ever cook bacon?” she asks. “OK, imagine that as the loose skin on your breast, and then you’re putting it on heat. Everything gets really tight.”

I suppose I, too, want better breasts. Or, like my lunch companion (though we still have not confirmed what she’s done), I want to achieve the good-to-remarkable transition in a way that doesn’t interrupt my life and is more enduring than a good bra. I could be happy with my boobs, but they have been affected by being on this Earth longer than 35 years, and by gaining and losing the same 15 pounds since I was in my 20s. But, because I am single and living the life of someone 10 years younger, I feel that I should have breasts of someone 10 years younger. I would like to have breasts that reflect my felt age (29) instead of my real age (39). Sometimes, on days I am being too mean to myself, I can’t help but think that overnight my breasts become those of the crone from that movie The Witch, though I am not quite ready to go into the woods and cast spells. (Getting close.) Mostly, I just want to be able to wear a tank top without a bra and not worry that my right boob, which is bigger than my left boob, will drop down like a balloon from the ceiling and scandalize the villagers.

I arrive at the Cleavage Clinic for a consultation one afternoon in early fall. (The season when transformations and makeovers are in the air.) For now at least, the Cleavage Clinic doesn’t have its own facility; instead it consists of two treatment rooms within a suite of other cosmetic businesses that offer procedures from laser treatments to Botox. Sort of an around-the-world of beauty enhancing procedures that I’m sure has hosted more than one bachelorette party. Since she doesn’t have a medical license, Tomaselli can’t perform the actual procedures, but she’ll lead me through my consult today. We settle into one of the exam rooms, a cozy space done up in beige and cream with gold accents. Even the Cleavage Clinic uniform, a camel knit jumpsuit and white sneakers, wafts the Instagram age’s signature clean, minimalism — that of women who bullet journal and post videos of their morning rituals.

She walks me through the three treatments on their menu, which cost somewhere in the range of $4,400 to $9,400. The two injectables available for breast enhancement, the PRP and Sculptra, both take about three months after the final session to see the full results. Most women who come to Cleavage Clinic want “very subtle minimal enhancement,” she explains. They are looking to increase maybe half a cup size to a cup size. “The results are beautiful,” she says.

For their signature breast lift, the procedure I’m most interested in, they use the sinister-sounding Morpheus8, a radiofrequency needling machine that tightens the skin. Tomesselli gestures to a machine in the corner and explains how it works: “Do you ever cook bacon?” she asks. (Girl, yes.) “OK, imagine that as the loose skin on your breast, and then you’re putting it on heat, which is radio frequency, and what happens to the bacon? Everything gets shriveled like shrink-wrapped, right? Everything gets really tight. So we’re essentially tightening the skin on their breasts so much that it’s lifting them.” It takes 40 minutes to become numb enough to withstand the 20-minute procedure (and clients can self-administer Pro-Nox, a fast-acting laughing gas, as needed). It’s a three-session treatment, but people see a difference after one, she says. And as for the results? You guessed it. “Beautiful.”

There was something about the low-stakes-ness of it — the way it feels as uncomplicated as deciding to get Botox — that suddenly made it hard to determine whether or not I would (or could!) do it.

Now it’s time to look my boobs in the face. Everything I’ve ever assumed about the consultation process for cosmetic surgery has been shaped by an HBO Original Movie from the ’90s, Breast Men, which tried to do for the inventors of the breast implant what The Social Network did for Mark Zuckerberg. I don’t remember much, but I do remember the surgical procedure started with a woman baring her breasts to a man who used a marker to circle all the problem areas he could see with his male gaze and told her how he could improve her. I took off my shirt and girded my loins.

After what felt like three seconds and was probably less, Tomaselli appraised my breasts: a two on the density scale, so I’d get a good lift. “For how big they are, they are pretty perky,” she says. And while I’d always thought they were totally different sizes, all she can see is two pretty symmetrical boobs. Where was the “make me feel bad to sell the product”? Who cares — I felt great! A perfect candidate who didn’t really need anything. Any intervention would be just a little enhancement on my natural, God-given luscious gifts. And why not? Especially when all it would take is: a consultation with their on-staff doctor 40 hours before the procedure; 75 minutes for the procedure itself; and then, for 48 hours after, no alcohol, no gym, no sauna, no hot tub. There might be some bruising, some itching, but, really, the day I’d do it, I imagined, I would work in the morning, come in for a late afternoon session, then take my new rack across the street for an early steak dinner at Keens Steakhouse. A nice, productive day. I made an appointment for three weeks out.

And then, the existential crisis set in. (Perhaps my breasts are not the problem.) There was something about the low-stakes-ness of it — the way that it’s so casual, that it feels almost as uncomplicated as deciding to get Botox, or a gel manicure, or dyeing my hair a new color — that suddenly made it hard to determine whether or not I would (or could!) do it. A traditional breast lift would require anesthesia, cutting, sewing, and scarring. There’s a gravity to opting into going under the knife. You have to be pretty sure of your why. I’d need reasons beyond just “wanting to look a little better.” Societally, the ability to change your breasts in a low-stakes procedure on your lunch break feels appropriate to our increasingly low-key attitudes toward cosmetic procedures in general, but still, shouldn’t more consideration be necessary? Shouldn’t I still have my reasons beyond just a casual confidence boost? And yet, why isn’t just wanting a casual confidence boost enough?

Cleavage Clinic is owned by women who want to help other women enhance their natural shape. Both of them speak as reverently about the clients who want to look better in a bikini as they do about the postpartum moms who emerge anew as they do about the trans women who come for gender-affirming care. In a new frontier of body modification options, is this actually the boob job of body acceptance?

A week before my own procedure was scheduled, I went to observe another woman get the same Morpheus8 breast lift I was set to receive. A 29-year-old who works in beauty marketing whom I’ll call Z was coming in for her second session of the series. She wanted perkier boobs but also to remove a scar on the inside of her right breast she’d gotten from a brutal-sounding hookah accident last summer. (Drinking, bikini tops, and enthusiastic hookah usage rarely mix.)

It’s 2025: We don’t comment on each other’s bodies, but we can admit to furiously trying to figure out what work someone might have done, nonjudgmentally.

Z pulls off her shirt, and Villella sets up to take the before photo, positioning a ring light to really capture Z’s results in the most flattering glow. After a check-in about how Z fared after the last session (about a week of redness, then nothing), Villella spreads lidocaine all over Z’s chest and explains she’ll take three passes over each breast. After 40 minutes of chatting about the book club Z is hosting that night, Villella adjusts some settings in the Morpheus8, hands Z the mouthpiece for the Pro-Nox machine, and begins. For a while, there’s no sound except for Z breathing in the Pro-Nox and a CHHHH-CHHHH-BEEP as Villella presses the Morpheus wand into different areas of her chest. Every so often, Z clenches her feet in seemingly mild discomfort. It looks easy, but maybe not that easy. She can chat about what dessert she needs to pick up (doughnuts might be fun), but she’s clutching her acupuncture ball for dear life. Eventually, she stops chatting and closes her eyes as a soundtrack of classical music versions of pop songs plays. I count 186 CHHHHH-CHHHH-CHHHH BEEPS! in every pass and wonder if I could tolerate it. About 30 minutes later, Z is done. She hops up, admires her breasts in the mirror. “Look how much different my left boob looks.” (She’s still a little Pro-Nox’d.) She rates the pain a 5.5, straps on a Cleavage Clinic-branded bralette, makes her next and final appointment, and heads out to get ready for book club.

Later, as I walk to the train, I see her running errands, dashing to the Q train carrying the box of Krispy Kremes she decided while on “the table” to serve for dessert. It all seemed as advertised: easy, carefree, convenient. And yet, as I walked off into the crisp fall air, I was unclear if I would keep my appointment the following week. It wasn't the cost, though the price tag is steep. It was the increasingly casual ambivalence toward procedures — that's as present in my group chats as it is on Kylie Jenner's boob-job recipe Instagram post, that makes the Cleavage Clinic possible in the first place — that caught up with me. Maybe I didn’t want to today, but it would be very easy to book for tomorrow, should I change my mind.