A short YouTube clip in which Alexi Panos reflects on cultural beauty standards, her evolving self-worth, and feelings about her body before and after breast surgery (explant). The speaker describes pressure from cultural norms, love for her pre-surgery body, and frames the explant as a symbolic personal "graduation."
Watching all of the standards of what's considered beautiful and starting to look at myself and going okay how do I compare to this as a woman? You know and granted I was a young girl at the time but I'm looking at these older figures and it just becomes inundated in the culture and it becomes normalized of like okay women if you're, if you want to look beautiful you're supposed to look like this. And that was kind of in the background. That being said I loved my body loved my small boobs pre surgery and I had right before my surgery have been getting pressured quite a like who I am is my value not what I look like and obviously I come in a package and you know I like to make the package look pretty but I get to accept who I am. And that was really it was almost like this huge graduation to come and do my explant with you. It's like I have graduated from.
