What Does a Breast Form Actually Feel Like?

If you’re picturing something hard, medical and vaguely mannequin-like, that’s not it.

If you went to prom sometime in the era of chicken cutlets, start there.

You know those silicone inserts you slipped into your bra when you wanted a little extra oomph?

A Myya breast form feels a little like that.

Except much, much better.

Ours are made from medical-grade whipped silicone. They’re soft and smooth with a matte finish, but they also feel surprisingly substantial. The silicone doesn’t slosh around inside. The form holds its shape and there’s a protective coating around it designed to make it durable enough for actual everyday life.

Basically: it's more soft breast, less water balloon.

And yes, it really does feel like a breast.

Okay, but what does it feel like

on your body

?

This is usually what women actually want to know.

A breast form has weight to it. Which is intentional. When you’re wearing the right size, it approximates the weight and shape of a natural breast.

The back of the Myya form is designed to help manage heat against the body. You don’t just stick the silicone directly into your bra, either. A pocketed bra has a fabric pocket built into the cup, and that’s where the form lives. It's like a cradle.

Once you’ve been wearing it for a while, the form warms toward your body temperature.

If you’ve had a unilateral mastectomy and still have one breast, the goal is for the prosthetic side to look and feel as natural alongside your remaining breast as we can make it.

When wearing your clothes, you shouldn’t look like you’re wearing a medical device.

You should just look like yourself.

How do you actually get the thing into your bra?

This part sounds much more complicated than it is.

Myya breast forms are triangular, with one point that’s slightly longer than the others.

You gently fold the form, slide it through the opening in the pocket of your bra, and let it open back up inside the cup.

The longer point of the triangle goes toward the top, pointing toward your face. The rounded part projects outward and creates the shape of the breast.

Then we adjust the bra to fit your body.

After surgery, your chest wall might be flat, convex or concave. You may have areas where the chest wall dips inward. You may have asymmetry. You may have scar tissue. Your body may simply have healed in a way that doesn’t resemble the diagram in a fitting textbook. That's perfectly fine. In fact, it's normal.

A breast form can’t fill every contour behind it.

That’s where a good fitter comes in.

We can adjust the bra, the position of the form and the fit so that the finished silhouette works with your chest wall rather than expecting your chest wall to work with the silicone form.

And what size breast form do I need?

This is where things get interesting.

Myya forms come in sizes 2 through 14. In the fitting room, that gives me a range that can accommodate everything from a very small breast through a much fuller cup.

If you have one remaining breast, we’re working toward symmetry with that breast.

But if you’ve had a bilateral mastectomy (both breast removed)

You get to choose.

And it's important to know that.

You don’t automatically have to recreate the breasts you had before surgery.

We look at your frame and proportions, and then we talk about what you want.

Want to stay toward the smaller end of what’s proportional to your body? Great.

Want to go fuller? Also great.

I once fitted a woman who had always had very small breasts. After her bilateral mastectomy, she chose not to reconstruct. When it came time to choose her prostheses, she told me she wanted big breasts.

So that’s what we did.

We fitted her with larger breast forms and moulded-cup bras that gave her the silhouette she wanted.

She didn’t spend her life explaining to people that she’d had breast cancer. As far as she knew, people probably assumed she’d gotten implants.

And she was perfectly happy with that.

Those were her breasts now. She got to decide what they looked like.

I love that.

Will people be able to tell I’m wearing one?

With a properly fitted breast form under clothing, most people aren’t going to know.

And it's something I wish more women understood when they’re considering their options after mastectomy.

You have almost certainly met women wearing breast prostheses without knowing it.

At work. At school pickup. At your place of worship. At the grocery store. At dinner. On an airplane. On the pageant stage.

Women are living entire lives in breast forms.

They just generally don’t announce it.

Which is kind of the point.

It's your call.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jasmine Jones is the founder of Myya and a Certified Mastectomy Fitter who has been fitting women after breast surgery since 2017.

She has personally worked with thousands of women in fitting rooms and through virtual fittings, helping them navigate bras, breast forms, asymmetry and changing bodies after breast surgery. Jasmine has completed advanced continuing education in post-mastectomy fitting and breast care, designs Myya’s bras and personally selected the manufacturing partner behind Myya’s breast forms.

She has also been a Johns Hopkins fellow exploring the use of artificial intelligence in advancing breast cancer care.