The Biggest News In Boobs Is Actually Quite Small

Alexandra kept repeating one phrase to the nurses at her surgeon’s Boston office: too big. Like a pre-op Goldilocks, she was there to test-drive a variety of implants to find a set that felt just right. For her, that meant small… smaller… smallest. Alexandra wanted the mole hill, not the mountain.

The last time women’s media paused to consider the breast of the moment, it was when Sydney Sweeney’s va-va-voom endowment ignited yet another skirmish in the so-called “culture wars” and a handful of conservatives somehow managed to construe one impressive set of mammary glands as evidence of the “death of woke.” This time around, the pendulum has swung in an altogether different direction. Not only has there been a dramatic uptick in breast reduction procedures in recent years — elective reductions shot up 64% between 2019 and 2023, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons — but nowadays even some women who decide to upsize are walking into plastic surgeons’ offices waving screenshots of the least bodacious of Kris Jenner’s brood, the aerodynamic Kendall.

Just look at Zoë Kravitz and Florence Pugh, freeing the nipple in clothes that make no bones about what they’re working with up top. Or Nicole Kidman’s dolphin-sleek physique, its lone topographical feature the pert, perky bust of an advanced middle schooler — living rent-free in many minds since the credits rolled on Babygirl. Or the three-headed blonde monster in White Lotus, flaunting sternum like a hot new erogenous zone. On a very different note, there’s Jenny Slate’s character in the recent series Dying for Sex: Defying long-held preconceptions about how much comfort the smaller breast has to offer, she offers hers up as a security blanket for Michelle Williams’s character to cling to (quite literally) in moments of crisis. For all of these women, less seems to be more than enough.

The surgical world loves a nickname, and in that sphere the current vogue is for the “ballerina” or “yoga” boob — whether achieved via breast lift, reduction, implant, or some combination thereof. In April, Kit Keenan, The Bachelor alum and daughter of ’90s fashion design phenom Cynthia Rowley — herself arguably a Gen X icon of small-busted chic — used a choice emoji to describe her subtle augmentation. On TikTok, Keenan praised her mom’s loving support after “my 🍒 job surgery.”

The prospect of a more low-key, tasteful surgical fix has got even the kind of woman you’d never imagine uttering the words “boob job” fantasizing about an upgrade. Take my friend Elise, 41, whose modest allotment was always pleasantly low-maintenance — easy-does-it in a strapless or with no bra at all — until the wild weight fluctuations during her two pregnancies. For the record, the girls still seem perfectly lovely to me. But Elise insists they’ve gone floppy on her. “Suddenly they require attention,” she moans. Always having to wear a bra is a drag. “I dream of restoring my small Bs and never again thinking twice.”

“The goal is not volume for volume’s sake,” says Manhattan-based surgeon Dr. Lara Devgan, M.D., who has a reputation for the kind of boob job that casual onlookers would never notice. Devgan says her clients want an “understated, sculpted aesthetic… harmony, not headline-making curves.”

Shifts in vogue for body shapes — like swerves in hemline heights and lipstick sales — are forever parsed for meaning. So what does a new appreciation for the smaller bust tell us about how women feel about themselves, or how we’re being viewed? Devgan argues “the movement” is a sign of progress. It’s about personal agency, not perfection. It’s not anti-enhancement; it’s pro-subtlety,” she says, reflecting “a broader cultural embrace of authenticity over artifice, of living in your body, not performing it.”

Given the concurrent rise of retrograde #tradwife femininity, and the right-wing snap-back to a heavy-handed, almost cartoonishly “female” archetype, it’s true that there’s something decidedly modern and even arguably pro-woman about a look that punctures the porn-y stereotype — an ideal that, as The Atlantic culture critic Sophie Gilbert argues persuasively in a new book, has been deeply internalized by both men and women, with devastating and wide-ranging consequences. The demure, Hepburn-esque “yoga boob” seems less concerned with appeasing and attracting the male gaze and more about satisfying the woman herself — who’d like just enough cuppage to fill out the triangles of a bikini top without getting in the way of her chaturanga.

All my clothes fit without additional adjustments and special buttons.

But there’s also no denying that the “yoga boob” is a thin woman’s game, out of reach to all but a certain swath of womanhood. And let’s be careful about calling it “revolutionary” that more and more women want to look — according to the surgeons I spoke with — like Kendall Jenner and Taylor Swift, or another stealth #boobgoal reference, Gwyneth Paltrow. There’s certainly nothing new about the sylph as a body ideal. And a high-and-tight bustline has been idolized on and off since the teen queen Marie Antoinette sparked the long-debunked yet enduring myth that the champagne coupe got its name from her delicate cup size.

Nevertheless, thanks to GLP-1 medications like Wegovy and Ozempic, which, while not FDA-approved for patients without obesity or type 2 diabetes, may be enabling already-slim women to shrink to clotheshanger proportions — and threatening to erase the social gains of “curve” models on the runways — thinness has become more attainable for those who can afford it (and are willing to medicate for it). This, in turn, has created a growing market for the selective restoration of that which weight loss has erased. Much has been made of the supposed withering of “Ozempic face” and “Ozempic butt.” Welcome, Ozempic boob.

Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Kelly Killeen, M.D., says two main types come to her seeking “perky and youthful.” One is women in their forties, who are done having kids and want to reclaim their former proportions — whether that means scaling up or scaling down.

“I was just longing to go smaller,” says Anne*, 43, who works in product development in Charlottesville, VA, and had a breast reduction last year. After having a child, her “big boobs got even bigger,” ballooning to double (and sometimes triple) D, straining every button-down shirt and “generally feeling like gravity was pulling down, not just aesthetically, but also quite literally.”

Anne opted for smallish Cs—significantly smaller, but still proportionate to her frame. "The tension in my neck and upper back resolved instantly,” she reports. “Going for a run is enjoyable. All my clothes fit without additional adjustments and special buttons. My bras no longer give me rashes or dig lines."

The aforementioned Alexandra, a marketing exec in New Hampshire, had the opposite post-baby woes: By her late thirties, after two kids, her former small-Bs had deflated to “two nipples with a crease underneath.” The magic words leading up to her 2023 enhancement surgery were anatomically correct. “The very clear remit to my doctor was, ‘I want Humpty Dumpty to be put back together again,’” she says. “I didn't want to look like anything other than myself.”

The other type of woman most likely to seek the “ballerina boob” is in her early twenties, eager to even out her proportions and fit clothing better. New York City-based college student Maggie was only 19 when she had her breast surgery augmentation last year, but she’d known she wanted a boob job for years. As a teen, she’d gone through a series of painful procedures to repair a genetically misshapen sternum — an appearance that was exacerbated by her almost nonexistent bust. Maggie was sick of double-padded push-up bras. “But I didn’t want someone who saw me in a tank top or a bathing suit to know I got implants,” she says. “I wanted it to be as natural as possible, not just the size but how they sit on your chest… My goal was to make it look like that's how I was born, you know?”

From a surgical perspective, there are logical benefits to opting for smaller implants, Killeen says. They tend to involve fewer mechanical downsides, especially for women with smaller frames, such as “bottoming out,” when implants migrate below the natural crease of the breast, or tissue thinning, when the skin and breast tissue on top of the implant begins to look stretched over time (more common when smaller-breasted women opt for larger implants).

My goal was to make it look like that's how I was born, you know?

While there is no proven link between breast implants and higher cancer rates, “smaller implants tend to put less pressure on the surrounding tissue and may be easier to monitor via imaging or exams,” says Devgan. “Though it’s still important for mammogram patients to inform their radiologist about the implant placement.”

But getting the look right takes subtlety. It’s not just about choosing the right implant, but also a surgeon who gets what you’re going for. Alexandra felt strongly about seeking an academic surgeon who was an expert not just in aesthetics but in women’s health, breast cancer, and reconstruction; ultimately, she found one who is also a professor at Harvard.

Maggie, on the other hand, caught Devgan’s name on a podcast and then, later, in a video posted by a satisfied patient on TikTok. When she looked up the doctor on Instagram, she saw that she specialized in the ultra-natural look Maggie had always wanted. “A small implant must be perfectly sized and placed — often under the muscle — to avoid visible edges or movement with flexion,” says Devgan. “Patients should be asking their surgeon about implant width, profile, and tissue compatibility, not just cc volume.” Killeen recommends avoiding high or ultra-high profile implants, which “sit out further from the chest and are one of the ‘tells’ of augmentation.”

Everyone I spoke with agreed that being crystal-clear on your goal look is paramount. Maggie brought in photos not of celebrities but of real women she’d spotted on Instagram — women in swimsuits, tank tops, dresses — which Devgan closely followed to choose the size and placement of her implants. Maggie is perfectly happy now with what she estimates is a full B to a small-C cup. “If you told somebody that I got a breast augmentation, I don't think they would believe you at first,” she says.

Alexandra found her #boobgoals, and 100K fellow travelers, on Bustmob, a Facebook-based, women-only community in which every aspect of enhancement — surgical goals, financing, prep, and recovery — is discussed. It must be noted that the array of offerings on Bustmob provides a quick reality check for anyone who believes that “yoga boobs” are a widespread standard. “Itty bitty” may be hot among a certain demographic, but the look is still wildly outnumbered by women seeking more pneumatic results.

Still, Bustmob’s #goalfinder page does have something for everyone. Users plug in their height, weight, age, and desired bra brand and cup size, from AA to H+. They can even enter the brand name of the implant they plan to get, and the placement of their incision — crease, areola, armpit, or bellybutton — to find out what women with similar builds and aspirations have achieved.

Ultimately, Alexandra selected the most diminutive implant that her surgeon would agree worked well for her lean 5-foot-3 frame and “somewhat wider” chest: a pair of under-the-muscle 275 cc silicone implants, for $15,000. (For scale, this bizarre yet useful online test equates 275 cc’s to 1.16 cups of rice.) The surgery itself was seamless. After about a week of shooting nerve pain, Alexandra felt fully recovered. At first, the implants seemed enormous, a common complaint, but after several weeks they “settled” into place and Goldilocks found that she had, in fact, achieved just right: sundress boobs. Just enough to fill out a top — no bra required, no heads turned.