If you want bigger breasts, you have a few options. The first choice is surgical breast augmentation. But the procedure is waning in popularity — surgeries dropped 33 percent between 2019 and 2020, while implant removals are up eight percent over the same period. The reasons are pretty obvious: It’s invasive, expensive and requires lifetime maintenance. Your next best bet is to get pregnant and have children, but that’s an even more invasive and expensive commitment than surgery (or an even more major surgery in the case of C-sections), and it’s likely not a decision people make based on boobs alone. You could also take hormones, either through various forms of birth control or through hormone therapy, but neither are guaranteed to make your breasts bigger. They also require a doctor’s approval.
If none of that appeals to you, never fear — there’s still one option left. According to members of a variety of subreddits and forums dedicated to breast enhancement, there are many methods you can use to achieve bigger naturals, naturally. Or, at least that’s what their fantasy is.
There are three major boob-growth subreddits in particular: r/NBE (an abbreviation for Natural Breast Enhancement), r/BreastExpansion and r/ProgressiveGrowth, which have around 240,000 members combined. For years, these subreddits have been frequented by the aptly named user BoobGrowth, a prominent figure in the breast-enhancement world and a sherpa of sorts for adult women striving toward fuller boobs.
While he’s “retired” from offering such guidance, BoobGrowth currently serves as the moderator for r/NBE. Previously, he ran a Tumblr — also called BoobGrowth — which boasted 60,000 followers before the platform banned adult content. “During that time, I directly helped a couple dozen women, but indirectly, possibly hundreds more,” he tells me. “In fact, I met two of my later long distance/online girlfriends through that blog. One I helped grow from a C cup to DD. Another grew from about a G to an HH,” he claims.
A 28-year-old Canadian who works in IT, BoobGrowth’s entrance into the world of breast enhancement began as a fetish. “One of my first girlfriends went on exchange and came back with bigger boobs,” he says. “Ever since then, the idea of growing breasts has been an interest of mine.”
Soon, he began exploring r/BreastExpansion and r/ProgressiveGrowth, as well as a separate forum on the topic called Breast Nexus. While these subreddits primarily focused on before-and-after pictures of women with bigger boobs, Breast Nexus was devoted to sharing advice on how one might reach a bigger cup size through herbal supplements, massage and even hypnotherapy. “It blew my mind that there were women who were using natural methods to grow their breasts,” he tells me. “It made intuitive sense to me — our bodies are very much the product of our genetics, but also of our diet, physical fitness, hormone levels and so on. And so, I spent hundreds of hours learning as much as I could about NBE to figure out what works.” Following the success of his Tumblr, he became moderator of r/NBE.
“There are lots of different methods for growing breasts naturally, but there’s a spectrum of methods that go from safe and fairly universal — but not as potent — to somewhat risky and harder to acquire, but possibly very potent,” he says. “Seeing as I had a large platform, I tried my best to only advise the safest, most universal methods.” As such, hormones were on the chopping block — they require an actual prescription, and results vary widely depending on the individual. Recommendations found on BreastNexus like eating bovine ovaries or using breast pumps were also nixed.
Instead, what he recommends most is a rather erotic alternative: daily breast massages. There are numerous varieties of breast massages, BoobGrowth says, and almost any of them will work. What matters more is that one remains consistent, performing the breast massage on themselves for 10 to 15 minutes a day, twice a day, using some type of oil to avoid damaging the skin. The ideal oil contains plant-based estrogen, like flaxseed oil, but BoobGrowth says coconut, aloe vera or shea butter are all fine, too.
Apparently, a single massage session won’t cause immediate gains, but he’s adamant that if you massage regularly, the temporary swelling it causes will eventually become real growth. On average, he claims, most women grow one full cup size in a month. “I know that sounds crazy,” he says. “But you’d be surprised how difficult it is to stay consistent, massaging every day or twice a day.”
Again, this did all begin as a fetish for BoobGrowth, and it’s quite possible he’s just a horny guy who gets off on telling women to massage their breasts with oil. “I particularly enjoy when the woman is eager and willing to grow bigger,” he says, somewhat tellingly. “I like when it’s something they desire themselves, deep down, to grow bigger boobs and make that a bigger part of their identity.” The fact that breasts are an erogenous zone only bolsters this fantasy, regardless of its efficacy.
On r/NBE, though, massage is also the most commonly touted method among women who are trying to enhance their own breasts themselves. Many routinely post progress photos, share their precise massage routines or discuss various supplements they’ve tried. If the pictures are any proof, people are at least getting bigger breasts somehow. One woman shared three photos of her progress from an alleged A cup to an E cup, citing a hormonal IUD and maca and fenugreek supplements for the growth. Another popular post comes from a man who claims that the breast massages he performs on his girlfriend have brought her from a C cup to a J cup. In addition to massage, BoobGrowth often takes to the subreddit to recommend women consume other phytoestrogenic foods like soy, though there’s no clinical evidence that any of this works, including the massages.
But none of that matters much to the breast-expansion community, really. Most members have their own evidence of efficacy, no scientific trials necessary. Meanwhile, many others are simply in it for the process. While r/NBE may primarily appear to be women looking to get bigger breasts, groups like r/ProgressiveGrowth and r/BreastExpansion are dominated by those who are simply there to watch and dream. It’s not as much about an aesthetic goal or quantifiable end point in size as it is about the journey, and the yearning for something that’s already good to become even better. It’s about boobs becoming… boobier.
And even if oiling up your tits and rubbing them for 15 minutes twice a day doesn’t actually make them larger, isn’t it just as fun to pretend?
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
