I Want to Be a Bombshell

On hourglass figures, female archetypes, and finally choosing the shape I've always admired.

My whole adult life I have had the same basic shape: small on top, fuller through the hips. Pear. Classic pear. I have always known it, dressed for it, and honestly never minded it much. It was mine.

The Shape I Always Wanted

But I have also, for just as long, been drawn to the hourglass. I’ll be honest about that. Marilyn Monroe. Jane Russell. The women on the covers of early Playboy. That particular kind of curvaceous that is simultaneously lush and structured, soft and dramatic. I wanted that shape. Just not enough, for most of my life, to do much more than reach for the shapewear drawer.

What a Bombshell Actually Is

A bombshell, to me, is a specific thing. I’m talking about Lana Turner in a fitted sweater. Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Sophia Loren simply existing in any room she walked into. Ann-Margret in the opening number of Bye Bye Birdie, all that energy and curve and absolute confidence. Monica Bellucci, who has been redefining what the word means for thirty years and is still doing it. And Helen Mirren in a bikini at sixty, which remains one of the most quietly radical images of the last two decades. What they share is the hourglass: full bust, defined waist, generous hips. A proportion that is lush and structured at the same time. The bombshell is unapologetically, deliberately, voluptuously there.

What She Isn’t

It helps to say what a bombshell isn’t. The femme fatale shares some of the bombshell’s weaponry but is cooler, sharper, more dangerous. Where the bombshell is warm and abundant, the femme fatale has an edge that cuts.

The athletic type is everywhere right now, especially in the MILF category: lean, toned, muscular, disciplined. Many of them have implants too, but the effect is entirely different. The physique reframes everything. Where the bombshell is soft and abundant, the athletic aesthetic is about precision and definition. Strong is beautiful, and I’ve been putting in my own gym time. But I’m not chasing that look.

They’re different propositions entirely.

And then there’s the girl next door. I know that one well. It was my whole brand in my earlier years, and honestly it still has enormous allure in this industry. Approachable. Wholesome. The fantasy of the woman who might actually be attainable. There’s nothing wrong with it. But it’s a softening, a reassurance. The bombshell doesn’t reassure anyone. She walks in and the room knows it.

The Long Distance

I appreciated all of that from a distance for decades. I wore padded bras. I wore push-up bras. I wore them on stage during my burlesque years and in front of the camera and whenever I wanted a little more drama up top. They did their job. But implants felt like a bigger commitment than I wanted to make, and for a long time it genuinely wasn’t what I wanted.

I think that’s worth saying clearly: wanting something for your body is allowed to change. Humans have been modifying their bodies for as long as there have been humans. Tattooing, scarification, piercing, binding, corseting, painting, reshaping. It is one of the most distinctly human things we do. We look at ourselves and we have opinions. We imagine alternatives. We reach for the version of our appearance that feels most fully like us, or most fully like who we want to become. That’s not vanity. That’s expression.

A Different Kind of Question

After my hysterectomy, elective surgery was nowhere near the top of my list. I was healing. I was grieving. I was getting through. Once I’d lost the weight and started feeling strong again, I found myself asking a different kind of question. Not what do I need to fix, but what do I actually want my experience to be? As a woman. As a performer. For the next few decades.

The Bombshell Idea

And somewhere in that question, the bombshell idea surfaced. Not as a fantasy I’d been suppressing. More like something that had been quietly waiting until I had the space and the health and the genuine desire to consider it properly.

I want the shape. I want the presence. I want to put on a dress and have it fit the way those dresses are supposed to fit. I want to look in the mirror and see something that feels, finally, like the outside catching up with something I’ve had on the inside for a long time.

I have had the same shape for forty years. I know it well. I’ve dressed for it, worked with it, made peace with it and even loved it. But I’m ready for something different now. I’m ready to enter my bombshell era.

This is the third piece in an ongoing series about my implant journey. Next up: the consultation, the decisions, and what I’m actually having done.

— Seska

If you’d like to support my surgery and recovery, I have a wishlist here in my pinned post on X.