Beauty and the Breast Beast

So I’ve been thinking about other things I need to teach my daughter prior to her growing up.  Mostly I spend a lot of time, an inordinate amount of time, probably as much time as a guy, thinking about breasts.  Breasts were just so great growing up.  Remember how we looked forward to getting them?  Locking the door to our room and doing those secret “Are You There God It’s Me, Margaret” exercises then immediately checking to see if they were working?  WHY AREN’T THEY WORKING????  I have tried to trace my breast obsession when I was younger to its core and I have a few theories.  One is that I wasn’t breast fed.  Apparently that can really screw you up.  My brother was, though, in an unfair turn of events as far as I am still concerned, and he is obsessed too; so there goes that.  I think the big thing though that undid reality for me as a kid was Playboy.  

My grandpa got Playboy and he proudly kept every single one going back twenty years.  It was quite a hoot, pun intended, to be the first in the family to spy the hidden bunny on the cover.  Everyone in our family read Playboy!  It was hung over chair backs, was slung face-down like a whore on the couch...everybody read it.  Except for me.  I was “too young”.  Puleeeeeazzzzze mom.  Like I haven’t seen boobs before.  Except that when I finally DID sneak it up onto my top bunk in the middle of the day (the best time to sneak books I wasn’t supposed to read, because there is nothing suspicious at all about a kid hiding on a top bunk in the middle of the summer in the middle of the day to read while all her friends are playing outside) I realized, no.  No way in hell had I seen these before.  

Good God, THIS is what I had to look forward to??!!  Oh my GOD!  I couldn’t wait to grow up and look JUST LIKE THAT!  Then when B.M. got her breasts in the middle of fourth grade, long before the rest of us, I was pissed.  I wanted a bra.  I wanted someone to snap MY bra straps.  I wanted someone to tease ME for my obvious awesomeness.  Where the hell were they, those elusive boobs?  I forced my mother to take me to JC Penny’s so I could get a bra.  “Why?  You don’t need a bra.  What in the world are you going to do with it?” my mother asked.  Jesus mom.  I just want the straps to show through my t-shirt so I can at least pretend I’m normal.  God.  “I dunno.  I just want one.”  Huge sighs all around.  She took me.  Literally two hours after we got home my mother totally betrayed me, telling my neighbor who babysat us about our excursion to JC Penney.  I had been busy in my room trying on every shirt I owned to see which one showed the bra straps off the best.  The babysitter laughed out loud, “What the heck are you going to put in it?  Socks?”  Hahahaha!  Fuck you.  “Shut up,” I said.  “No,” she said, “Like, I mean it!  Hahaha!  Do they even come in negative sizes? Hahaha!”  Like, fuck off.  Like, fuck you for your fucking breasts you bitchy bitch.  “It’s a 28.  DOUBLE A.”  So there.  It’s a double A.  A DOUBLE A.  That was way better than an “A” right?  I mean two is more, better than, extra, right?

I am still waiting.  I mean, I have had those moments since then where I now realize how stupid I was.  No, I’m lying.  It wasn’t stupid at all.  When I was pregnant and had my daughter, my tiny breasts ballooned to two globes of fabulousness so impressive you couldn’t pay me to put on a shirt.  EVER.  I breastfed in public constantly just to show them off.  They have since returned to normal much to my dismay.  I have moments, too, when I am supremely grateful for them being so cute AND little, and for retuning to normal.  My fear that they would empty of milk suddenly and then lie there like two tube socks kept me up nights.  Dodged THAT bullet.  Whew.

   

Ok, ok, so on to the big important lesson.  Darling daughter, no one grows up to look like those girls in Playboy, not even those girls in Playboy.  And those goddamn exercises don’t work.  And little breasts are so cute!  They are so great!  “I must!  I must!  I must just love my bust!”  And the second you want to go to Penney’s we are SO THERE.  Not because I want you to EVER grow up.  Ew.  The idea of my daughter with breasts is terrifying.  She is already too powerful in  my opinion.  I will take her because I remember.  Pure and simple.