Growing the Girls

I recently read a story by Suzanne V. Tanner, calling for "Breast Building Stories" for a possible e-book.

Suzanne's story is like those of many of the girls I grew up with. They just couldn't wait to have breasts and be all grown up.

My story is nothing like hers.

Unlike many of my peers, I did the opposite of waiting and longing for breast development—I developed early.

It wasn’t as cool as the other girls made it out to be.

During swimming classes in 4th grade, I would sneak off to a bathroom stall to suit up. Having the other girls stare at my budding breasts made me very uncomfortable. Watching them saunter through the dressing room in all their flat-chest glory made me feel unkind envy—they were free, while I was already constricted in a training bra.

Fifth grade was worse—I was out of training and wearing an A cup by then—and my cup runneth over. But I wasn’t quite ready for the B, Mom told me. Gapping, you know.

While my peers were busy stuffing Kleenex into their training models, trying to make themselves appear bigger, I was busy stuffing my breasts into a not-quite-big-enough cup and being mortified by the fleshy overhang.

One jealous lassie suggested that my breasts were really nothing more than fat on my chest, and if I’d lose weight, I’d be flat as a pancake. (Girls are awful. As a female, I can say that. As the mother of three girls, I can repeat that. Girls are just awful.)

I was a chubby girl—that’s true. I was never skinny; not ever. But my boobs were real boobs, whether she liked it or not. Whether I liked it or not, come to that—and I didn’t. I would have relished a couple of extra years of unfettered freedom. Bras are torture devices; we all know it.

Sixth grade; and I’m in a B cup, and again overflowing the damn thing. A very tall boy in my class has the audacity to ask, in front of a group, if my feet get wet when it rains. I blush furiously, humiliated. I don’t have the nerve to open my mouth and inform him that they are not that big.

And I wondered how my sister was managing her classmates. She’s 18 months my junior, but her development began about the same time mine did. I was in 6th grade, she was in 4th, and she was closer to moving up to a C cup than I was, poor thing.

It is my biased opinion that later is better. At least after the age of 12, I should think. But we don’t get to make that choice; it is what it is.

But I have to admit to having a lot of early resentment toward the “girls”. What were they doing, showing up before everyone else had some? And why were the other girls so bitchy about it? Did they think I was growing breasts to show them up? To make them feel less-than? It wasn’t like there was a thing in the world I could do about it, one way or the other. Didn’t they realize I would have loved to run around the locker room in flat chest abandon for a couple more years?

In the next few years, my sister came to hate her breasts—she didn’t even want to talk about bras, or how hard it was to find pretty ones in our sizes. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about it. My mother was and is a fan of function over fashion when it comes to bras.

I came to accept and even like my own boobs, and I wanted pretty bras, but you hit those size Ds and over, and all that could be found was functional. If you could find them at all, that was. In our area, at least, the stores seemed to believe women never got bigger than a C cup. I spent several years doing special orders, and if you think that wasn’t embarrassing, think again.

The bra market is better these days, and pretty big bras can be found. But the price difference is definitely an issue. I have friends who can buy a ten-dollar bra. I have never paid less than $30.00.

I have a couple of friends who had breast-reductions in high school. If I thought I was over-burdened, their situations made me re-think things. I was built, overall, to carry my girls around—they weren’t. To this day, I wonder if my sister might have been more comfortable with having something done with her own, but they remain a part of her to this day, and she seems to have come to terms with them. At least she no longer bristles when I show her a new bra.

By the way—the prettier they are, the less functional they are. Also, the prettiest bra I ever owned was the least comfortable. I’m too old to care anymore. If it’s semi-cute and doesn’t make me want to cry before dinnertime, I’m okay with it.

As it is, I’m diligent in my mammograms and breast health exams, because I am rather attached to Miss Baggy and Miss Saggy, and I’d like to hang on to them—or let them hang on me, I guess.

They grew on me.