I wished for breasts back when I was young, clueless of what I was asking for, and flat as a board. I remember being excited for breasts and my period and for the life of me I have no idea why. I do remember my mom cautioning me to be careful what I wished...remembering both of my grandmothers, I should have heeded her warning. But no, in my per-pubescent mind breasts would mean something.
And they do mean something – just not whatever magical long forgotten thing I thought back then.
Breasts for me have meant expensive bras, ill-fitting clothes, back pain, and a self consciousness that left me bundled in baggy or flowing clothes for a good bit of my life. It has left people staring, both lustfully and distastefully, at my chest and commenting on it without provocation. My grad school dean once looked at my shirt and then said with a certainty that implied we’d discussed this (we hadn’t) “so you’ll be going home to change before tonight.” That particular comment stained my brain in part because I'd had a conversation with myself about wearing that shirt and NOT draping myself in a larger shirt over it, before I'd left the house that day. She was the embodiment of my own self-conspicuousness.
The think about large breasts that folks that don’t have them don’t seem to understand is that you can wear the exact same shirt as someone with smaller breasts and what is “cute” on them is somehow “lewd” on you. Sometimes it is the way breasts pull the fabric taut against your chest, the cleavage that manifests in a V neck, or the dilemma of tent to accommodate the breasts or poppin’ fresh dough to fit the torso.
I maneuvered these options for most of my adult life. Smoothing my breasts into expensive uncomfortable bras and then fretted over what “message” my shirt or dress was sending because my body couldn’t just exist, it must be telegraphing codes to the world around me.
And then COVID hit and the extent of my adventures for the first year was trips to the grocery store. So I stopped.
Just like that.
I stopped wearing bras.
The first time I ventured out to the grocery story my mom, who is only marginally taller than breast level with me, looked at obviously bra-less chest and said, “no bra.” It was both statement and question. And when she looked at my face she had her answer.
In a moment of clarity that should have been obvious to me years ago, II realized the attention my breasts get without a bra is really no different than what they get when plastered to my chest. The only difference is that with one I'm imprisoned in a device whose only attribute (other than aesthetics) is the 15 seconds of near-orgasmic gratification when I take it off at the end of the day.
After-all, I was wearing a bra when my boss sexually harassed me years ago (in my father’s old polyester bowling shirt no less), and when a fellow professional at a job fair asked me lewdly if “I knew what I was doing to him in that dress (that came to my knees and buttoned past any cleavage)”. And I was very much wearing a bra when the dean inferred the inappropriateness of my shirt which really was a discomfort with the breasts inside of it.
So now, with the exception of professional settings, I mostly go bra-less.
Squarely in my 40 and closer to 50 than not, I’m trying to make peace with the body I was born in, its jiggles and handles, and yes, its curves – no longer imprisoned but instead set free.
