The Appeal of the Smaller Breast

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Daily – "The Appeal of the Smaller Breast"

Episode Information:

• Title: The Appeal of the Smaller Breast
• Release Date: November 20, 2024
• Hosts: Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise

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Introduction to the Emerging Trend

In this episode of The Daily, Rachel Abrams introduces a shifting landscape in cosmetic surgery trends, highlighting a significant rise in breast reduction procedures. Traditionally dominated by breast augmentations, the field is witnessing a notable increase in surgeries aimed at reducing breast size, particularly among women under 30.

Notable Quote:

"From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily for decades, breast augmentations have been one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in America. But in recent years, a new trend has started to emerge. The breast reduction Today." – Rachel Abrams [00:35]

Statistical Surge in Breast Reductions

Lisa Miller provides an in-depth analysis of the data showcasing this trend. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, breast reductions surged from approximately 40,000 pre-pandemic to over 76,000 in 2023. While breast augmentations still remain more common, their numbers are declining as reductions climb across all age groups.

Notable Quote:

"In 2023, which is the last year for which data are available, more than 76,000 women had breast reductions... to be sure, the most popular cosmetic breast surgery in the country is breast augmentation." – Lisa Miller [02:40]

Cultural Shifts Influencing Body Image

The hosts discuss a palpable shift in cultural aesthetics, noting increased visibility of smaller breasts in fashion and media. Miller draws parallels to past decades when larger breasts were idealized, suggesting that contemporary fashions and media representations are now celebrating smaller breast sizes.

Notable Quote:

"In Brooklyn, where I live, so many young women are wearing, like, tank tops and camisoles without bras, slip dresses without bras... It really did feel like it was everywhere all at once." – Lisa Miller [04:16]

Medical Perspectives and Surgical Insights

Miller delves into the medical aspects of breast reduction surgery, detailing the procedure which involves significant tissue removal and associated risks such as impaired breastfeeding and permanent scarring. The cost of the surgery ranges from $10,000 to $20,000, often not covered by insurance unless stringent criteria are met.

Notable Quote:

"This is a surgery that can technically be covered by insurance, but the algorithms and formulas involved are extremely complex and the bar is really high and most women don't end up being covered." – Lisa Miller [12:35]

Motivations Behind the Decision

Through interviews and social media insights, Miller identifies three primary motivations for breast reductions:

1. Physical Pain: Chronic back, shoulder, and neck pain caused by large breasts.
2. Fashion Constraints: Difficulty finding clothing and bras that fit comfortably.
3. Social and Psychological Pressures: Objectification and sexualization from a young age leading to low self-esteem and desire for autonomy over one's body.

Notable Quote:

"I think it's a third bucket. But it really encompasses everybody. When you grow up with very large breasts... you are objectified and sexualized from an incredibly young age." – Lisa Miller [17:27]

The Role of Social Media and Community Support

Miller highlights the significance of online communities in providing support and validation for women considering breast reductions. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram feature advocates sharing positive experiences, thereby normalizing the procedure and reducing the stigma associated with it.

Notable Quote:

"There is a huge breast reduction conversation happening on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube... the vast majority expressed no regret or doubt." – Lisa Miller [15:22]

Autonomy and Self-Expression

The episode explores the intersection of body autonomy and societal expectations. Miller discusses how younger generations, particularly Gen Z, view plastic surgery as an extension of self-expression and personal autonomy rather than capitulation to external standards.

Notable Quote:

"This is autonomy. And if I want a different kind of breast in order to wear a different kind of outfit or present in a different kind of way, that's not an admission that I'm capitulating. That's an expression of autonomy and independence and freedom, liberation." – Lisa Miller [21:24]

Personal Reflections and Ethical Considerations

Towards the conclusion, Miller reflects on the ethical dimensions of plastic surgery, questioning whether women's choices are truly autonomous or subconsciously influenced by entrenched societal norms. She emphasizes the importance of respecting individual decisions while acknowledging the pervasive impact of cultural pressures.

Notable Quote:

"The minute you try to make women choose, you're missing the point... I have a daughter and I made sure always to tell her how beautiful she is no matter what." – Lisa Miller [26:28]

Conclusion

The Daily effectively captures the multifaceted reasons behind the rising trend of breast reductions, intertwining personal narratives with broader cultural and medical contexts. By shedding light on the complexities of body image and autonomy, the episode invites listeners to reconsider preconceived notions about cosmetic surgery and the evolving standards of beauty.

Production Credits: Produced by Olivia Natt, Eric Krupke, and Rochelle Bonja. Edited by Mark George with assistance from Chris Haxel. Original music by Leah Shaw Dameron, Alicia B'eetoup, and Marian Lozano. Engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Theme music by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

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Transcript

[Schwab Representative]

With Schwab Investing Themes, it's easy to invest in ideas you believe in, like online music and videos, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and more. Schwab's research process uncovers emerging trends. Then their technology curates relevant stocks into themes. Choose from over 40 themes. Buy all the stocks in a theme as is or customize to better fit your investing goals, all in a few clicks. Schwab Investing Themes is not intended to be investment advice or a recommendation of any stock or investment strategy. Learn [e-mail] ThematicinFind Investing.

[Rachel Abrams]

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily for decades, breast augmentations have been one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in America. But in recent years, a new trend has started to emerge. The breast reduction Today. My colleague Lisa Miller on understanding the appeal of the smaller breast. It's Wednesday, November 20th. Hi, Lisa.

[Lisa Miller]

Hi, Rachel.

[Rachel Abrams]

So you recently wrote a story about something that I am pretty sure we haven't covered on the Daily before, and that topic is breast reductions. And I'd really love to hear, before we get into it, why you wrote about it and why it interested you.

[Lisa Miller]

Sure. I work on the well desk at the New York Times, and well is the area of the Times that covers health and wellness, nutrition, fitness. I am particularly interested in the subject of women's bodies and how it feels to be in a female body walking around in the world. So those are the kinds of stories that I do. So my colleague Stella Bugbee, who is the editor of the Stiles desk, handed me these numbers one day. And the numbers were from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. And they showed this dramatic increase in breast reductions over the last five years driven by women under 30. And she was just like, what do you think is going on here? So I just set about sort of exploring both why the trend and also sort of what was in women's heads as they were making these decisions.

[Rachel Abrams]

Can you tell us a little bit about those numbers? Specifically? What did they show and what were they?

[Lisa Miller]

So in 2023, which is the last year for which data are available, more than 76,000 women had breast reductions. And these are not surgeries that have to do with cancer and they're not gender affirming surgeries. These are surgeries that insurance companies deem to be cosmetic. And it was just an astonishing jump from pre pandemic when the number was more like 40,000. And you know, to be sure, the most popular cosmetic breast surgery in the country is breast augmentation. Still, these numbers are Tiny in comparison to the numbers of women who are getting augmentations. 300,000 about get an augmentation every year. But those numbers are creeping downward, and the reduction numbers are going upward, not just among young women, but among women in every age group.

[Rachel Abrams]

You know, it's funny, I feel like I too, have noticed this trend towards smaller breasts in popular culture. I can't really put my finger, but I feel like I've walked into stores where you see dresses that you really can only wear if you have small breasts. It feels like there are more models with small breasts on the Runway. And I've noticed this sort of anecdotally here and there, but I didn't realize at all that that trend was actually something quantifiable and showing up in data somewhere.

[Lisa Miller]

Totally. I mean, I was thinking about this before I came to record this session, and I was like, it's a little bit like learning a new word and then you hear that word everywhere.

[Rachel Abrams]

Yes, totally.

[Lisa Miller]

So, you know, I saw these numbers and I was like, h. And then I went out into the world and like, in Brooklyn, where I live, so many young women are wearing, like, tank tops and camisoles without bras, slip dresses without bras. In la, where I went to report the story, I saw all these women wearing these smock dresses where you couldn't wear a bra.

[Rachel Abrams]

I said, I'm well aware of the smock dress.

[Lisa Miller]

And so it just. It really did feel like it was everywhere all at once.

[Rachel Abrams]

And also, I mean, it just sort of runs counter to, I think, a lot of the imagery that, like, we've grown up with in terms of what was on television. Like, there's a reason why breast augmentation surgeries got so big.

[Lisa Miller]

I mean, you know, when I was growing up, being flat chested was a mortification. Nobody wanted to be flat chested. I remember this distinctly from high school. Everybody admired the girls with bigger boobs. The big girls with bigger boobs, like, showed off in the locker room. This was the 80s, and, you know, that was the era of silicone breast implants. That was the era of big breasted models.

[Rachel Abrams]

Dolly Parton.

[Lisa Miller]

Dolly Parton.

[Rachel Abrams]

I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up Hooters, which I do not. I do not feel like you could have launched that now, but that is a big restaurant chain that launched, I think, in the 80s or 90s.

[Lisa Miller]

Totally. It was all okay. And not only was it all okay, it was all desirable. I mean, as one of the women I spoke to for the story said, to me, like, when you have big breasts, you're winning. She's like, that's what culture thinks about big breasts. And when you go back, that goes back to post World War II voluptuousness, right? Like Marilyn Monroe leads into Baywatch, leads into Kardashians. It's this kind of ostentatious display of femaleness. Big breasts meant power, they meant sex, they meant motherhood. They were something that men wanted, and if you had them, you know, it was money in the bank. And so by the 2010s, breast augmentation, which had gotten more and more and more sophisticated and the implants had gotten more and more and more natural looking, was the most popular cosmetic surgery in the country. 350,000 women a year were getting a breast augmentation.

[Rachel Abrams]

Everything you're saying, I mean, all of our experiences, I think, add up to the idea that it's not groundbreaking to say that Americans have been pretty obsessed with the female breast, right?

[Lisa Miller]

No, not at all. It's not groundbreaking. I mean, there's been this obsession with breasts in culture for, you know, ever. But what surprised me as I was doing the reporting was the extent to which this obsession not only extended into the medical community, but actually originated with it. I had a conversation with a plastic surgeon who was a woman, and she was telling me about this paper that was published in 2011 in a plastic surgery journal in which an English plastic surgeon described the contours of the ideal.

[Rachel Abrams]

Breast and the ideal breast.

[Lisa Miller]

The ideal breast, just one. I mean, and he used that language in the paper in this medical journal. And this text became foundational. It became like a training text for generations of doctors. And in the introduction to the paper, he talks about how, you know, Leonardo da Vinci defined the contours of the ideal human face. And he put this effort into that context like he was helping the profession of plastic surgeons create and improve breasts for the world. He had this idea that the ideal breast was sort of concave below the nipple and sort of flat above the nipple. So he was very specific in the shape of the ideal breast. But no one has breasts like this. No one has breasts like this. And yet the conventions around what a breast should look like are so strong and so established that when a woman walks into a plastic surgeon's office and remember, you know, four fifths of them are men, she says, I want something smaller. They say, well, your husband might not like that, or, you should try losing some weight first, or, I like them rounder. And there's a whole Reddit thread where Women tell these stories to each other about walking into plastic surgeons offices and asking for smaller breasts. And the feedback they get makes them feel like what they're asking for is crazy.

[Rachel Abrams]

So obviously, Lisa, breast reduction sounds like a very self evident term, but just for the sake of it, can you walk us through what the surgery actually entails?

[Lisa Miller]

Yes, sure. So the surgery usually involves, you know, making an incision around the nipple and then from the nipple down the length of the breast, the curved part of the breast, and then removing a lot of breast tissue from inside the breast. A thing that's really important to say here is that most of the women who go in for breast reduction have double D cups or bigger. And these days the plastic surgeons told me most women are asking for a B cup, whereas five years ago they were wanting a C cup. So they're asking for more breast tissue to be removed. And you know, Kelly Killeen, who was one of the surgeons I spoke to for my story, I was talking to her in her office, she was wearing her scrubs and I was like, but how much breast tissue are we talking about actually? And she reached down and picked a Coke can up out of her garbage can. And she was like, I just took this much breast tissue out of one breast in a patient.

[Rachel Abrams]

Oh my God.

[Lisa Miller]

You know, it's a lot. And so it's a much more invasive surgery than augmentation. And it has all of these potential consequences that are enduring. It can affect a woman's ability to breastfeed. There are not great data on this, but the best study says about a third of the time it can affect nipple sensation. And there's permanent scars that frequently go around the nipple, down the breast, under the breast. And the women are really making a big trade. You know, they're saying, I'm willing to do all of these things in order for my breasts to be smaller.

[Rachel Abrams]

And so when they decide to make, as you said, that big trade and get the surgery anyway, what does it end up costing them?

[Lisa Miller]

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says it costs about between 7 and $8,000. I spoke to a lot of plastic surgeons for this and none of them charge that little. Most of them charge somewhere between 10 and 15,000, with the high end surgeons in New York and LA charging as much as 20. So it's a lot. And this is a surgery that can technically be covered by insurance, but the algorithms and formulas involved are extremely complex and the bar is really high and most women don't end up being covered. And so what that means is that there are women with very large breasts who may be experiencing some to a lot of pain who have to pay for this surgery out of pocket. And that is very frustrating to them and to their doctors. And the more I talked to the women, the more I understood that in every woman there's some combination when she walks into a surgeon's office asking for this surgery of pain, discomfort and a desire to have a different shaped body that is really different from what she had before.

[Rachel Abrams]

We'll be right back.

[Vanta Representative]

At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more. As third party breaches continue to rise, companies are increasingly vigilant, which means more time spent on manual security reviews. With Vanta questionnaire automation, security and compliance teams can complete security reviews up to five times faster, giving you time back to focus on running your security and compliance programs. Over 8,000 global companies like ZoomInfo, smart recruiters and NOIBU use Vanta to save time on security reviews. Visit vanta.com daily to learn more about questionnaire automation. That's vanta.com daily.

[Rachel Abrams]

So Lisa, tell us more about what you actually ended up learning about people's motivations when you started talking to them.

[Lisa Miller]

Yeah, I mean what I learned was that every individual woman has a variety of reasons for wanting this surgery. That there is no single reason. And the question is really like, which is the thing that tips the scale and makes the woman decide to do it. And so I talked to a lot of women in person and on the phone, but I also spent a lot of time on social media and yeah.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

I'd love to talk about my boobs on the Internet. So let's go ahead.

[Lisa Miller]

There is a huge breast reduction conversation happening on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

I'm getting a breast reduction because it's just always been a struggle.

[Lisa Miller]

And from immersing myself in all of this conversation over many, many weeks, I.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Would recommend a breast reduction to anyone considering it.

[Lisa Miller]

I would say that there are three main reasons why women decide to reduce their breasts. And the first one is just physical pain.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Okay, physical pain.

[Lisa Miller]

Straight up pain.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

My back was constantly in pain. I could not walk for more than a mile without having to stop.

[Lisa Miller]

A woman with very Large breasts often has back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain.

[Rachel Abrams]

I used to actually get chest pain sometimes because I used to feel like.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

I was getting suffocated by my chest.

[Rachel Abrams]

When I would lay down or wear tight clothing.

[Lisa Miller]

Often there's rashes underneath her breasts. She can get headaches from the pain. It can be a real struggle.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

It is physically painful to wear most types of bras, tops, tank tops, anything that supports them. Pain.

[Lisa Miller]

So there is a medical need.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Pain aside, I also used to find it hard to find clothes sometimes.

[Lisa Miller]

Another is a sort of a fashion impulse.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

I could not really shop at regular department stores because none of the clothes really catered to my body.

[Lisa Miller]

Which is just that if you've grown up with bigger breasts, you've been wearing constraining clothes for your whole life.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Wearing swimsuits, that was always hard. Getting the right swimsuit, finding the right bra. It's so difficult to find bras that fit you.

[Lisa Miller]

And almost every single woman I talked to for the story said that her aspiration going in was to buy a bra or a bikini at target. Like spend $15, buy something off the rack, have it be cute and sexy and carefree.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Any store you can think of, I've probably gone there and like they didn't have my size because they don't really.

[Rachel Abrams]

Carry 32 and under.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Finding clothes that fit comfortably, that's it. That's the reason I was a 30H when I was 15. So you can imagine the stairs I got.

[Lisa Miller]

And I think, you know, this is a third bucket. But it really encompasses everybody. When you grow up with very large breasts, especially if you're very young, just.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Weird, weird men and just stares all the time, which as a 15 year old being self conscious anyway was not nice.

[Lisa Miller]

You are objectified and sexualized from an incredibly young age.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

At 16 years old, you have these jugs that grown men are looking at and sexualizing and then they look at you.

[Lisa Miller]

People have thoughts about you. People think you're sexually active when you are not. Everybody said this to me.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

People always say, you look like a whore, you look like a slut. Because I constantly have my boobs out. And honestly, I won't try to have my boobs out. I am wearing.

[Lisa Miller]

A lot of women talk to me about shame they felt from their moms, from their teachers, from their siblings.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

I was bullied because I told this guy I didn't want to be his girlfriend and he made fun of my chest.

[Lisa Miller]

One woman told me that everybody in her neighborhood called her fast because she had very large breasts. As a child and she had a lot of older brothers, and they basically didn't let her out of the house alone.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

And I went to the bathroom and I cried and I was in six.

[Lisa Miller]

So I think, you know, I think it's intuitive that it's hard to be that girl. But talking to these women really brought that home for me. They're carrying a lot, and they're carrying a lot for a long time. And so when they have a chance to change that, they do.

[Rachel Abrams]

But also, just listening to you tick off the reasons why a woman might want the surgery, I can kind of imagine people reacting with different levels of acceptance depending on how, quote, unquote, legitimate they decide the reasons are. For example, if somebody has an aesthetic desire versus a medical need, you can see how people would respond differently about whether they personally felt that the surgery was, like I said, legitimate. And it kind of reminds me of how people lie about having a nose job. Like they say, oh, I had a deviated septum. Because, you know, people are not super open about this stuff always about plastic surgery. And so I'm curious, for all of these reasons, do women who get breast reductions, do they feel pressure to, like, justify their decision in some way? Is this something they talk about openly?

[Lisa Miller]

Like, I can't even say how much. Not at all.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Hello, booby besties, as I'm calling you guys.

[Lisa Miller]

As I tell you all, really, like, not at all.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

So I am a one month post op and I only have positive things.

[Lisa Miller]

To say instead of being embarrassed about plastic surgery or lying about it or hiding it.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

All of the girlies that said that your confidence skyrockets could not be a truer statement.

[Lisa Miller]

Women tell women about their breast reduction.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

So I just took my three month post op photos and I'm gonna show.

[Lisa Miller]

You literally, like showing their breasts to each other. Stop.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

Here they are. I cannot believe how they look. My girls are perfect now. They're the same size. They're nice and perky. They're not bothering me now. They're just doing their thing. Love them. It was the best decision I've ever made.

[Lisa Miller]

There are of course, women who are unhappy with the results.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

I'm here to be that person to tell you that there are negative things and they're not worth having smaller boobs.

[Lisa Miller]

Women have gotten terrible infections. Takes a long time to recover from them. But the vast majority expressed no regret or doubt.

[Breast Reduction Advocate]

If you are thinking about getting that breast reduction, do it. Yeah, shout out titties.

[Vanta Representative]

You know, what else can I say?

[Rachel Abrams]

And why do you think that is?

[Lisa Miller]

I think It's a lot of reasons. We are in a post me too moment and young women are really determined to get in charge of how they're perceived in the world and not let their particular body parts be their introduction into any room. They wanna control their presentation. They wanna be able to cover up or expose as they wish. They don't want to be part of the sort of male gaze industrial complex at all. So that's one reason and the other is that especially young women like Gen Z women have a very different relationship to their bodies than my generation does. They are really avid consumers of plastic surgery in general. They do arm reductions and fillers and eyelid stuff and stuff I haven't ever even heard of. Not being a consumer of plastic surgery really. They have just a much more open idea about being able to change their body as part of self expression. That is not an idea I grew up with.

[Rachel Abrams]

What do you mean by that?

[Lisa Miller]

We grew up feeling ashamed, embarrassed that we were flat chested or skinny or whatever, not voluptuous or whatever, whatever. And then we became enlightened as young women and at that moment we were like no, no, I'm perfect. All of my cellulite is perfect and my gray hairs are perfect and my big nose is perfect. And this sort of aligns with like the body acceptance movement, right? Like you don't have to be some kind of ideal going back to the plastic surgeon in the medical journal, like you don't have to hew to that. That is not your problem, that is not your business. Stand up and like love yourself in every shape that you have. And so, you know, when I approached the Gen Z women and I was like, why do you want to do this? Stipulating that, you know, there's pain and health concerns here. What I was probing for, what I was poking at is like, don't you think you're perfect already? Why do you want to change your body? And what they said was surprising, which was like no, no, I am doing this for me. This is autonomy. And if I want a different kind of breast in order to wear a different kind of outfit or present in a different kind of way, that's not an admission that I'm capitulating. That's an expression of autonomy and independence and freedom, liberation.

[Rachel Abrams]

I just can't help but think like as you're talking about this, that this feels both new because we're talking about a trend of breast reductions, which is a new thing, but it also feels like kind of a age old argument. As long as plastic surgery has been around, it's been this debate of like, are you doing it for you? Is it truly empowering? And even if you think it's truly empowering and you're doing it for you, you're actually doing it for somebody else. And what do we think the right answer is for? Like, who's allowed to do what? Even if a woman says that she's doing it for one reason, we can't always trust her that she understands her reason. So it feels like what's old is new again. I guess a little bit.

[Lisa Miller]

I completely agree with you. And I thought about that a lot as I was reporting the story. Like, why am I second guessing the reasons that they're telling me?

[Rachel Abrams]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Lisa Miller]

And one of the most revelatory conversations I had was a conversation I had with a plus size model who sort of confessed that she was considering a breast reduction. And you know, she makes her living being a person in a different body than the conventional ideal. And yet she too was attracted by this idea that she might be able to unencumber herself by reducing her breasts. I presented this dilemma to her, like, aren't you supposed to just love who you are? She was like, yes, yes, but we all live in the world. We all take our bodies out into the world and we get catcalled and we get looked at and we get judged and people think things about us and it is impossible to be a female person in the world and not absorb those signals. And so although in some ideal universe we're able to live in our, you know, God given bodies with happiness and ease in the real world, that is impossible.

[Rachel Abrams]

So given all of this, where did you actually land you yourself as the reporter who happens to be a person in the world on this question of who is this for? And whether this is just yet another way to make women feel inadequate about our bodies?

[Lisa Miller]

Yeah. Yes to both.

[Rachel Abrams]

Yes.

[Lisa Miller]

Like, yes. Yes plus one. Like, I think that the minute you try to make women choose, you're missing the point. And I see this in my own life, right? Like, I have a daughter and I made sure always to tell her how beautiful she is no matter what. And I want her to grow up with a sense that, like, nothing about her body is a thing to be ashamed of or corrected or fixed or inadequate. Like, that is the identity I hope that she carries through the world. At the same time, I had breast cancer several years ago and I had a breast reconstruction. And so as I think I alluded to, like, I am not a plastic surgery person. That is not my natural choice. And yet the breast cancer forced me to have a breast reconstruction. And what I will say about that is that my breasts look better. They just do.

[Rachel Abrams]

They just do.

[Lisa Miller]

I'm, you know, a middle aged, late, middle aged woman. They had some miles on them. I breastfed my daughter. I ran two marathons. Like the lifted breast is like nice. And so although I wouldn't have chosen it and I formerly would have had all kinds of judgment about it, I feel that it is an enhancement. So who am I to judge?

[Rachel Abrams]

Well, Lisa, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

[Lisa Miller]

It's been a pleasure. Love being here.

[Rachel Abrams]

We'll be right back.

[Schwab Representative]

With Schwab Investing Themes it's easy to invest in ideas you believe in, like online music and videos, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and more. Schwab's research process uncovers emerging trends, then their technology curates relevant stocks into themes. Choose from over 40 themes, buy all the stocks in a theme as is, or customize to better fit your investing goals, all in a few clicks. Schwab Investing Themes is not intended to be investment advice or a recommendation of any stock or investment strategy. Learn [e-mail] thematic investing.

[Vanta Representative]

As third party breaches continue to rise, companies are increasingly vigilant, which means more time spent on manual security reviews. With Vanta questionnaire automation, security and compliance teams can complete security reviews up to five times faster, giving you time back to focus on running your security and compliance programs. Over 8,000 global companies like ZoomInfo, smart recruiters and NOIBU use Vanta to save time on security reviews. Visit vanta.com daily to learn more about questionnaire Automation. That's V A n T a dot com daily.

[Rachel Abrams]

Here's what else you need to know today. President Elect Trump continued a series of surprising choices for top roles in his second administration, picking celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz to oversee the Centers for Medicine, Medicare and Medicaid Services and Howard Lutnick, a Wall street executive who's leading Trump's transition team to serve as Commerce secretary. Lutnick, the head of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, would be in charge of an agency with an $11 billion budget and wide influence over broad swaths of the economy. The choice of Dr. Oz, who's faced criticism for his sometimes dubious medical advice, comes after Trump chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A notable notable vaccine skeptic, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. In his announcement, Trump said that the two men would work together to, quote, take on the illness industrial complex. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Natt, Eric Krupke and Rochelle Bonja. It was edited by Mark George with help from Chris Haxel, contains original music by Leah Shaw Dameron, Alicia B'eetoup and Marian Lozano and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

[Vanta Representative]

At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own, plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.