I am hot. It's my job. Sure, I can sing, I'm an artist and stuff, but if I weren't kinda hot, my job would be a lot harder. Being hot keeps 'em, coming back, and bringing new people. "She's soooo hot! AND she can sing!"It wasn't always this way. I was a fat, drug-addled young adult with bad hair trying to be punk rock while growing up in the farm country of western Massachusetts wearing my dad's marine greens. The whole "hot"thing is very new to me.

I'm not going to be demur and say how unimportant it is—I totally appreciate it. Let's face it: Even way out here on the fringes of the entertainment industry upon which I stomp, it's still very sexist. As a female entertainer, I'm supposed to be approachable. Being attractive helps with my gig, so I must embrace it, enjoy it and, hopefully, get over it before the ravages of age take away my short-lived hotness.

My body has always been big, which was really fun with the name "Large."Big, but uncurvy. Even when I gained weight in my teens and 20s (185 pounds when I was 16) I still had no boobs or girly hips. "Flatso"was a favorite jab in the ol' cafeteria.
I never ruled out plastic surgery, but couldn't really justify it. It just didn't sound like me; so extreme, so vain. As time went on, however, it sounded more and more doable. Especially since, now well into my 30s, my small but nice A-cup boobies were starting to do that flat coin-purse thing.

I researched breast augmentation for about a year before I did it. If I was gonna be put to sleep, filleted and stuffed with sloshing salt-water pouches, I was gonna be armed to the teeth with knowledge. I read all the pros and cons, looked at every possible before and after, from the good to the bad to the horribly botched. I read every personal account, even the super-scary ones. But the thing that stumped me more than fear of pain, death or Frankenboobs, was. . . what would people think?

Shocking! Storm cares what you think?! Not really. But I wondered if I was buying into something ugly, something fake. I'm a public person, and some consider me to be a strong, who-cares-what-you-think kinda broad. By doing this, will I be declaring that my body needs to look better in order for me to be happy? Do I believe I'm incomplete, sub-standard? And to what standard was I measuring myself? As a woman, am I saying that a certain body type is attractive where others are not? And is being attractive that important?

After those five agonizing minutes, I cupped my flappy little boobs in my hands, thanked them for being cute and stuff, then went for it.
I had met Dr. Karl Wustrack to interview him for Exotic magazine; his boobs were the best from what I could tell, touring the finest gentlemen's clubs in the area and interviewing (read: feeling up) his patients. He was The Man.

The surgery and the week that followed is a mottled blur in my memory of pain: pain-killers, bandages, drainage tubes, feeling remorseful and my boyfriend bringing me soup and policing my Vicodin intake. The pain and remorse went away as the months went by and my newbies softened and fell into fine, T-shirt-filling shape.
Now my pert and lovely C-cup boobies are a year old and looking and feeling swell. To me, I look more curvaceous, more womanly. It's like going through puberty again with a little more say in the outcome. Only a dash of people said they opposed my decision, but they're drowned out by the rest of the world that either doesn't know or doesn't care.

One woman got all righteous on me about violating the temple of my goddess body and selling out and blah, blah, blah, insert phony Wiccan drivel here and why why why. What, I gotta stay flat-chested to keep some chick happy whose Daddy didn't hug her enough? Fuck that. To shut her up I just giggled and said, "Duh, Silly! I wanted bigger boobs so the boys would want me front-ways for a change.”

I was clearly over my concern of public disappointment. So, in the end, I'm no hotter than I was with my original A-cups, truly. But I love the way my body looks now. It was all for me ... but for all of you, I promise to share. I will continue to wear filmy tight things with no bra and jump up and down onstage while sweating. It's my job.

Originally appeared in Exotic Magazine. Reprinted with permission of the author, Miss Large.