photo by steed media service

The idea of having plastic surgery has never bothered Tamara Houston. In fact, before she went through with her breast augmentation procedure in January, the registered nurse spent four years intensively researching her options, before deciding on a doctor to perform the operation.

At 37, Houston noticed that with age, her breasts had lost their shape and fullness. “I considered it because I wanted to have my body match my image of myself,” she says of the natural body alterations that sparked her interest in the procedure. Houston meticulously considered every possible angle of the mammoplasty, the surgical procedure to enhance the size and shape of a woman’s breasts. She spent time with her doctor viewing before-and-after photographs prior to going with NATRELLE silicone-filled implants. After the procedure, Houston was thrilled, saying she was mentally and physically at peace with herself. “I had this done after extensive research, so I had an idea of what I’d look like,” she says. “How I felt mirrored what I looked like because I’d done the homework.”

Though extremely satisfied with her results, Houston attests that black women are conditioned and trained to forgo plastic surgery. “I just want to demystify that by saying we as black women are changing; we’re becoming much more progressive, we’re becoming more modern,” she says. “We’re making the choice to get out of bad relationships, to go to college at an [unprecedented] rate, to go get the CEO job if that’s what we want, and to have any other type of elective surgery that makes us feel good.” - gavin p. godfrey

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