Scottish woman living with macromastia says hormone shifts caused 11 bra size increase in one year

At 8 years old, Summer Robert sensed something was different about her body. At 25, she finally had a name for it. At 28, she is still learning to live with it.

Robert, who was born and raised in Scotland, has macromastia — a rare condition that causes excessive, ongoing breast growth. She stands 4 feet 11 inches tall and wears an R-cup bra. In the past year, she grew 11 bra sizes, a trajectory doctors say is driven by hormonal changes.

“Basically, I go through growth spurts,” Robert said. The hormonal shifts responsible for her rapid size changes are similar to those experienced by many women in their 20s, physicians have explained — but Robert’s response is dramatically more severe. And beyond that distinction, she said, very little about macromastia is medically understood.

For years, that lack of understanding left Robert without answers.

“I had been going to the doctors since I was like 14 or 13 years old, and not one of them diagnosed me. No one told me that there was a condition,” she said. “They all just said it was puberty. They all just said I had to lose weight. It was ridiculous.”

The diagnosis, when it finally came, offered limited guidance. Robert said her doctor “literally printed a Wikipedia page and gave me the Wikipedia page.”

Growing up in Scotland, Robert experienced near-constant hypersexualization — on the street, in school and in social settings. As an adult, she found an unexpected path to self-acceptance: an OnlyFans account she launched about two years ago.

Still, macromastia makes ordinary life difficult. Clothing shopping is a persistent ordeal. Because of the disproportion between her chest and waist measurements, she said nearly everything she wears must be “super stretchy” — and even then, fit is not guaranteed.

“Nine times out of 10, it will still not fit,” she said. “It’s just day-to-day things that you would think are so easy — it’s so difficult.”

She wears a back brace for most physical activities, including long walks and cleaning her home. Joining a gym, she said, is simply not an option.

Breast reduction surgery has been discussed, but specialists told Robert it would not be a permanent fix.

“We spoke to a breast reduction specialist, and he told me that they’d just come back. He said, ‘If it’s really causing you so much stress, you can definitely get a reduction,'” she said.

She expects to undergo the procedure at some point but is taking her time. As her doctor put it: “They’ll come back, but not super, super fast.”