I Dressed As Dolly Parton 1 Week Before My Double Mastectomy. It Wasn't Just A Costume.

HuffPost · Barbara Meskin · 2026-11-05 13:11 UTC

“As the evening unfolded, I began to appreciate something more meaningful than the obvious joke.”

One week before my double mastectomy, I stood in a friend’s living room wearing a platinum-blonde wig, fake eyelashes, a sequined mini skirt and two enormous pink balloons, which were masquerading as Dolly Parton’s breasts.

There was something wonderfully absurd about it because in seven days, surgeons would remove the breasts I’d lived with for 47 years and attempt to reconstruct them with silicone implants. And here I was, voluntarily doubling down on the cleavage, singing off tune and bringing everyone in a makeshift karaoke house to their feet.

It wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined spending my last Halloween with my breasts.

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