B00Bs in Bio
If I knew how to work the cyberpole like a good little book hustler, I‘d be using my newsletter to sell this ONE WEIRD TRICK that will make you a best selling author. Or at least make you buy 10 copies of my new book. But I clearly don‘t know how to do either of those things, so fuck it. Let‘s talk about boobs.
Over the past few years, The Discourse around boobs has been getting louder and weirder. There were all those people being very normal about Sydney Sweeney’s breasts.
But wait, I guess Sydney’s rack didn’t kill Woke after all, because actually itty bitty titties are in!
Unless you are a queer reality dating show contestant that is.
So I guess Woke isn’t really dead, it just snuggled into Lexi’s ample cleavage and fell asleep..? Relatable.
Writing my previous post about dark femininity got me thinking about how much of my internalized femme-phobia and complicated feelings about gender are tangled up with the size of my breasts.
I’m closer to Sydney-sized than Lexi-esque, so an argument could be made that my boobs aren‘t really that big. And, yeah ok, fair. I currently wear a 30F bra, which for you bra-free types means small ribcage, big cups. They may not be the biggest on the block, but they are definitely big for my frame. Big enough to have left permanent grooves in my shoulders from years of heavy-duty bra straps but not so big that I suffer from back pain because of them. Big enough to be noticeable no matter what I‘m wearing, which is really what I want to talk about.
When I was younger, I certainly enjoyed taking financial and sexual advantage of other people’s interest in my breasts, even though I always secretly wished that I could remove them when my shift was over. It’s kind of like having Barbie feet, or being stuck in permanent high heels. A femme signifier that I didn‘t choose and couldn‘t hide.
Yes, I‘ve tried binding. No, it never really worked for me. My breast tissue is too dense and there’s just too fucking much of it. I can make my chest seem a little bit flatter in the front, but never completely flat. Intense discomfort for minimal results hardly seems worth it.
So, for the longest time, I just accepted my boobs as an inescapable fact of life and leaned into the busty, Femme Fatale archetype. I really loved performing that kind of drag, but never took it too seriously and it was never the whole story. People who were closest to me always knew that for me, being identified by others as purely “female“ was a lot like being forced to wear an ill-fitting bra. Constantly needing adjustment, existentially uncomfortable and I kept on spilling out of the cups.
I have never felt entirely male, and I don‘t feel 100% not-female either. I often joke that I identify as “she-adjacent,“ but like a lot of jokes, it‘s got a grain of truth to it. I guess she/they is probably the closest to how I feel in this moment.
I just turned 56. I’m a little bit curvier than I was at the height of my Hot Noir Babe era, though still close enough to the societally-approved size for women to benefit from that privilege. My tits are bigger (and sweatier!) than ever now and yet I couldn’t be less interested in their heterosexual appeal, their feminist implications or their supposed wokeness or lack thereof. Truth is, I feel more conflicted about them than ever.
As I get older, I find myself drawn to looser-fitting, more androgynous clothing. You know, the kind of clothes that look amazing if you‘re tall and boyish but can look weird and dumpy when you’re short and your largest measurement is your chest. I make compromises and I do have plenty of things that fit well and look good on me, but there‘s always that little voice saying how much nicer everything would look if I didn‘t have such bodacious tatas.
Many people who are both bigger and smaller than I am have elected to deal with the problem surgically, and who knows? Maybe I‘ll go that route some day too. But for now, I‘m, trying to be kinder and less judgmental towards my little meat car. After all, it‘s the only vehicle my brain will ever have.