In a new one starseries, we ask people from all walks of life what it means to them to be a woman or a man, to live as a trans person or to not feel like they belong to any gender. We set out to find what shapes our sense of gender. Today Silke Kress tells us what it’s like to live without breasts.
Recorded by Lisa Frieda Cossham
Silke Kress is 52 years old and lives in Kulmbach. Due to a cancer diagnosis, the former operating room nurse had first one breast removed and later also the second. In 2019, she founded a breast cancer support group through the Pink Ribbon organization. Today Silke Kress works with her husband in their own occupational therapy practices.
I grew up in the former GDR. Back then, all of my classmates and friends wore curls. I’ve been watching the trend for a while, just like I always watch everything first. And then I used the blessing of my youth as an opportunity to get a perm. Mom paid for it. The hairdresser twisted strand by strand and then pulled them onto the curlers. My hair was shoulder length, and when the rollers were out, it looked shorter. I had beautiful curls. I liked that, I felt like a young woman for the first time. The fact that I can change like that is what being female means to me.
Later I wore my hair really short. Whenever I went somewhere, to a new job or something, people would say: You look like Annie Lennox. She had her leather jacket on and looked completely normal, I liked that. She wasn’t in disguise, she was herself. And I’m becoming more and more successful at that. I’ve been wearing dresses since my 50th birthday, something I didn’t do before. I don’t care what others think or say. I want to be more of that woman that I haven’t been for a long time.