Kerstin Ott on her mastectomy: ‘It is my body’

Kerstin Ott says her operation was not simply a breast reduction for aesthetic reasons. The singer told Bunte that she underwent a full mastectomy, partly because breast cancer runs in her family and because her breasts had always troubled her.

Ott said the operation took place when she was in her thirties. It was not a spontaneous decision, but the result of a long process shaped by a continuing fear of illness. “My breasts were never important to me,” she said, adding that she had generally felt bothered by them.

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It is also important to me to say that this was not a reduction, but a full mastectomy.

The singer described the mastectomy as an attempt to regain control and reduce her cancer risk. A better feeling about her body, she said, was only a welcome side effect. She acknowledged that not everyone understood the decision.

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It is my body. And it really does not matter what other people have to say about it.

“People always react a little like: ‘How can someone do something like that?’” Ott said. Her response was direct: “It is my body. And it really does not matter what other people have to say about it.”

Ott had first spoken publicly about the operation on Bettina Böttinger’s podcast, Zwischen den Zeilen. There, she said the person who decides is the individual undergoing the procedure, not a spouse or people looking at the decision from outside.

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It is your body. You are the person who decides. Not your spouse and not the people looking at it from the outside.