"I must, I must, I must increase my bust!"
Though I never read any Judy Blume books in my youth, it is nearly impossible to be a young woman in the U.S. and not be familiar with this iconic quote from Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. As a very small-busted woman, there have been times throughout my life where I wanted nothing more than to have the body of a lingerie model. With their larger-than-life bosoms in every mall across America, courtesy of Victoria’s Secret, it’s hard not to define beauty and sexuality in terms of cup size. Even the teenybopper magazines I once read were littered with ads for breast enhancement supplements, which I secretly contemplated purchasing with my father’s credit card on more than one occassion. I am inclined to believe that this perpetual unhappiness with one’s breasts is worse in the white community than in others, as it is this demographic which is most commonly represented in lingerie ads and Playboy centerfolds, but I have no hard data to back up this assertion (though songs like “Baby Got Back” and “Thong Song” indicate to me that perhaps the ass, not the breasts, are the definition of “sexiness” in the black community).
The funny thing about my pre-teen obsession with having larger breasts - which has since subsided but not disappeared - was that, when they first appeared and a training bra from Limited Too became necessary, I wanted nothing more than to crawl in a hole for a few years. However, I think that all young girls go through this phase. As you notice your body changing and realize that this suddenly makes you different from all of your male classmates and friends, that these new things will dramatically alter your relationships with those same boys with whom you once adventured in the woods and played with toy guys - well, it’s a little jarring.
By middle school though, embarrassment over breasts is quickly replaced by other forms of discontent, and this sentiment seems to linger throughout a woman’s life. Given how breast-obsessed women are, there is no shortage of articles about our relationships with our breasts that demonstrate this fixation - “Mine are too small, but I found a man who loved them as is and I learned to accept them” or “Mine are too big, and I felt like they define me, so I made them smaller.” These types of stories seem cliche, but there are really only a handful of ways we think about our breasts, and I am of the opinion that finding a woman who is content with hers would be a great struggle. Women seem to always want them bigger, smaller, firmer, or perkier. One of my friends has a chest that men constantly ogle and discuss, and yet she can only focus on whether or not, at age 23, they are beginning to sag.
Despite our overall disappointment with the breasts “God” gave us, our relationships with and opinions of our breasts are constantly seesawing. One day, we might actually like them and feel empowered by our ability, in a sea of whiners, to accept them. In those moments, we might wear them like badges of honor. In other moments, we might hate them and feel compelled to do things like leave our bra on during sex. We bicker with each other about whether bigger or smaller is better, and we analyze how our personas and the male perception of us (which influences said personas, sadly) are dictated by our breasts. Even the shape, size, and color of nipples can become a point of frustration.
I’m very much still trying to decide how I feel about my own, and I will likely go back and forth about them forever. I will get older and my body will change. I’ll have children, and then it will really change. I’ll meet men who have strong opinions one way or the other about breasts and about mine in particular. The number of days where I am content with mine has grown exponentially though - no longer do I feel the need to buy questionable “growth supplements.” There are still some days, however, where implants sound appealing, but those are fewer and father between than when I was in college. However, I definitely still have my moments of breast envy and of frustration with larger-chested women who dare to complain about their “bounties.”
Take, for example, an article in the November 2011 issue of Elle magazine titled “The Shape I’m In”. The author, once a woman with F-cup breasts, chronicles her lifelong struggle to accept her body and embrace her curves - even after they shrank down to a C-cup. She accurately describes the ups and downs women go through with their breasts, but she made a blanket statement about small-chested women like myself that I found untrue and unfair:
Flat-chested, slender women aren’t the emotional ones…they’re cool, stylish, and treated with deference.
Small-chested women are not cool, desexualized creatures. We can be very sexual, sexually charged, and full of passion (though I will back down on this point, at least as it pertains to me, below). Furthermore, we often have to adopt strong personalities and portray ourselves as being funnier, wittier, more intelligent, and generally more interesting in order to attract male attention. We tend to be the type of women that other women point out as being beautiful but who men discuss largely in terms of our personalities. Big-breasted women often complain that their bodies define them and that they fall into a trap of becoming sex objects and thus forget about or fail to cultivate their other wonderful qualities. Though that sounds awful, for the most part - probably worse than having to work hard to grab a man’s attention and keep him engaged - there is an easy quality to the life of a “sex object” that can sound appealing to those of us who fall far outside of that label, at least in its most traditional sense.
Recently, I found myself explaining (or attempting to explain) to a guy friend that I sometimes want to be “sexual.” His first question was - “By ‘sexual,’ do you mean slutty and hooking up with lots of guys?” No, of couse not, but there is an undeniable appeal to having men pay attention to you because of how you look because, let’s face it, we put a great deal of effort into that, even when it’s to achieve a sweeter, more demure aesthetic. I certainly have no desire to be one-dimensional, but every so often, being hyper-sexualized would be fun - and in my mind, that is strongly linked to one’s breast size.
Sure, you can have great legs, a beautiful face, a nice butt - typically though, at least in the white community, men’s eyes wander to the breast area first. As I tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to explain this idea to the boy, he pointed out that I regularly criticize women for looking grossly provocative or “trashy” (although I’m sure he and other men find many of those same women sexy). Sure, part of my criticisms may be linked to envy - some of these women seem to fall so naturally into this sexiness that I can’t seem to totally embrace. However, I think part of my inability to tackle sexiness is due to a sense that my look and body type run counter to that. Even if I dressed like some of these girls, I don’t think I would feel sexy - I would just feel silly and fake, as I correlate my physical appearance to the sweeter side (and, also, most of the women I criticize are actually really gross and are approaching “sexiness” from a Lil’ Kim angle). I want to think that being “sexual” is a mindset, attitude, or sense of confidence rather than the byproduct of one’s body, but given that images of full-chested, scantily clad women are so tied to sexuality in our culture and tend to be what men gravitate to, it’s hard as a woman to get past that.
Though I will not likely ever fully accept my breasts for what they are naturally, at least I can, some days, find satisfaction in the fact that I can wear those slinky, low-cut, braless gowns. And, hey, that’s pretty sexy too. It’s just a constant fight for women to own their “look” and learn to project “sexiness” in their own ways.
