In the beginning, and for the next thirty odd years, my body could have been defined as androgynous, and I could have been described as a body nazi. Then I became pregnant, and most of my body remained the same, but I nursed my daughter for several years, which seemed to horrify friends, and little by little, I discovered I could no longer wear my favorite vintage dresses. Well-intentioned relatives warned me that if I didn’t wear a bra, I’d end up looking like one of those sagging breasted women in Africa. “Have you seen their nipples? They hang like straws! That’ll happen to you if you don’t start wearing a bra!”
Before nursing, I never felt my titties jiggle while running. They were truly boyish. I never noticed them and I doubt anyone else did either. I liked how my breasts didn’t get in the way of things. Friends with larger breasts would complain about their backs hurting, the difficulty finding a comfortable sports bra. There were those friends who seemed rather proud of their voluptuous breasts and never complained, but simply admired their trophies, and told incredible tit stories that left me both confused and awed.
After I was thirteen and my period had started, I assumed my body would begin transforming into that womanly shape, and I’d shed my boyish frame like a snake shedding its skin. One night I stood in front of the closet mirror searching for this evidence, and I thought my breasts looked bigger, and I could convince my mother it was time for me to wear a bra. Then I heard the neighbor kids sitting on the front steps, cat calling and laughing, witnesses to my pushing the titties upward to make them look larger. For the rest of the week, they were unmerciful with their ridicule. The neighbor girls were also much more developed, the boys older, and I grew to hate their chant: The bigger, the better, the tighter the sweater. I also started wearing baggy flannel shirts and refused to wear a bra after my mother finally decided “it was time.”
In high school, I remember the first boy who assessed me by saying: “Watermelon may be large but cherries are sweet” and realizing he meant that my breasts reminded him of cherries. Cherries reminded me of that game Hi Ho Cherry Ho where you picked the plastic cherries out of a tree and put them in a bucket. I’m sure he thought I’d be flattered by this comment, but there was something distasteful about being compared to fruit, even sweet fruit.
Today my daughter is fourteen, and the first time I put on a cami to go outside and mow the lawn, her eyes widened with horror and she yelled, “You can’t wear that! Look at yourself in the mirror!”
It was an eyeful. Smushed beneath the cotton, I wondered how that happened, when that happened, and if it was still happening? Until putting on that shirt, I hadn’t realized how much my breasts were sagging. This is hot and humid Arkansas, and I was only going outside to mow the lawn, and I didn’t want my daughter to think breasts that squished into a shirt like that were anything to be ashamed of. Unlike my cami, she pointed out how well her camis fit. I didn’t want to call it to her attention, or she’d have more ammunition on her Mother’s Body Flaw List, but worse than the sagging breasts, the tight cami revealed how large I was also getting below the breasts. She may have noticed because before I left the house, Ania shook her head in disgust and said, “I wouldn’t wear a shirt if it fit like that!”
“Look at men. They can mow the lawn shirtless. They’ve got it made,” I said before stepping outside and mowing the lawn. The neighbors, and their out of town parents, were watching the children play in their pool. By the time I finally got the old lawn mower started, I was drenched in sweat and forgot about my shirt. I waved to them and continued mowing, believing they were relieved I was finally cutting the grass, leaving a good impression for their parents.
Later that week at the grocery store, my neighbor’s closest friend came up to me and said, “Wow! I heard about that shirt you were wearing mowing your lawn. David’s mother told Heidi she better watch out for you since you mow the lawn half-naked!” She roared in laughter and other shoppers slowed down, gave me a good look over, then shook their heading, giving me that a woman your age, how disgusting look.
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