Building a Relationship with My Boobies

Since age sixteen I’ve spent way too much time thinking about boobs. That’s when boobs came to me — at age sixteen. Before that, I was a long, lean, flat-chested girl. I was safe then, safe from the stares, the judgments, the boob management.

But since I got boobs, I’ve spent countless hours trying to hide them, ignore them, deny them, and shun them.

I felt safer without boobs. The butcher at our corner store called me “son” when I was twelve. I remember feeling a little tingle of satisfaction shimmy up my spine when he called me that. “I’m safe,” I thought to myself because I don’t have boobs.

I was so late in developing that part of me that I thought I’d never get boobs. But then I did, almost overnight when I was sixteen. I was a competitive swimmer and suddenly none of my suits fit. But worse than that, I could feel everyone staring at me when I stood on the starting block waiting for the official to start the race.

I had such shame about my new breasts that I became radically silent about them. I didn’t ask my mother to take me to get a bra and, in my memory, she didn’t ask me to go buy one. Instead, I stole one of my younger sister’s bras (she’d developed breasts much earlier). It fit okay so I wore that bra. When she asked at dinner where her pink bra was, I put it in the laundry so it would end up in her drawer again.

But before I did, I wrote down the size. The numbers and letters meant nothing to me. I just knew I had to match them. I had been saving a Playtex catalog that had come in our mail. I looked through the pages to find the simplest, most modest bra I could find. I filled out the order form for that bra in my sister’s size. I took my babysitting cash to the bank, got a money order, and mailed the order form back to the people at Playtex.

I waited patiently for my bra to come in the mail and I wore that one, just that one for months. Eventually, I started taking bras from my stepmother (who also was not anywhere close to my size) but for the rest of high school, I never bought another bra. 

In college, I had more independence — a checkbook and a debit card — and I became a little more brazen about going to the department store in my college town to buy bras. I did so in secret, never with friends, and never actually knowing my size. I’d take multiple sizes into the dressing room — always choosing the simplest, least sexy bras I could find. As if hiding drugs or stolen property, I’d tuck my new bra purchase into my bag and feel relief at not having to do that again for a while. 

Because I never knew my true size or the style of bra that would best suit my body, I bought too many bras, hundreds over the years that were ultimately unfitting or unsupportive, or uncomfortable. My attempt to deny the existence of my breasts was like an affair I was trying to hide. Year after year, shopping trip after shopping trip, I’d stuff the unworkable bras into my underwear drawer with the rest of the misfits and go shopping again.

It wasn’t until I became the mother of a daughter that I decided that I had to develop a relationship with my breasts. First I had to feed her with my breasts so I had to communicate with the two foreign orbs on my chest. We both grew to love the ladies for the bounty they provided.

But I needed to do more. My daughter would develop breasts someday and I didn’t want her to have the shame I had. Once I stopped nursing I went to Nordstrom to get a bra fitting. It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. I worried tirelessly about a stranger seeing my naked torso. After all these years of hiding my body, how could I possibly show it to a random woman at Nordstrom? What if she had tiny perky breasts? What if she could detect my crushing insecurity? But I did it for my daughter.

The woman was so nice. She didn’t say anything like, “Wow, your boobs are really big and saggy.” She didn’t avert her eyes. She lifted and measured and crossed her arms across her own well-fitted chest, leaned her right ear to her right shoulder, and said, “What kind of bras do you like?”

And I understood that day that I wasn’t a freak. I just had big boobs. Big boobs that I didn’t have a relationship with. From the time my daughter developed breast buds, I celebrated her breasts. First I took her to get colorful little cami bras of her choosing. Then, when her breasts grew bigger I took her for a bra fitting at Nordstrom with the nice, accepting, shame-free women who had shown me so much grace and acceptance.

Each time my daughter’s bras stopped fitting we went back to kind women at Nordstrom so they could fit her again. I was always surprised when my daughter wanted me in the room with her for these fittings. She had no shame. She accepted her body. She did not carry my internalized boob disdain. 

My daughter is a young adult now and she has a relationship with her breasts. She likes to buy beautiful bras. She has bras in all colors and styles. She changes clothes in front of her friends. She wears bikinis. I am so relieved that my burden is not her burden.

Early on in my life with I learned to disassociate from my breasts. It was easier to live without a relationship with my boobs than to accept that they were actually mine — permanent, on my body for the rest of my life. 

Ultimately, I decided to develop a relationship with my breasts to be a good mother. And I’m grateful for this moment of post-partum clarity. I still have shame. I still hide my body, but I have a relationship with my breasts. I can comfortably browse the bras at Nordstrom without lurking like a weirdo. It’s been a journey. And I’m still on it. But I’ve come a long way. Thank you to the wonderful bra-fitting women at Nordstrom.