Happy Titty Tuesday Everyone! I’ve just realized that here I am a woman with one boob writing a blog called “Fierce tit,” and I’ve never written a post about boobs, my thoughts on them, and my relationship to them.
My boob story is a long, complicated, winding one full of plot twists. Maybe yours is too. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my breasts have been a big part of my life. In many ways they’ve been these ever-present markers of the passing of time, my life measured by nipples.
Sure enough, one of my nicknames in high school was “Titters.” As in “tits.” I suppose in some way I was destined to write this blog.
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
I didn’t get the nickname for having big tits or showing them off. I got the nickname because a guy friend of mine accidentally messed up my last name one day. I was an athlete, and often got called by my last name. (After all, it was on the back of my shirt!) So one day this friend was being silly (let’s be honest, there was probably weed involved) and he stumbled and called me “Titters” instead of my last name. He thought it was so funny that he kept it up – for years.
I don’t see these friends much anymore, but I still smile at the irony. What would I be today? “Titter”? “One Titter”? I like the sound of “Fierce tit” better I think.
In fourth grade I wore a loose-fitting t-shirt to gymnastics class one day. In the middle of trying to do a handstand, my shirt ended up around my face. I had nothing on underneath. I crumpled to the floor, to protect my dignity.
But it was too late. My gymnastics coach pointed two fingers at his chest and, in his accented English, said “I cannot see the nipples.”
But of course he could. Everyone could.
It was in fifth grade that I started wearing a bra. It was a soft, cotton, unlined piece of fabric with lacy inch-thick straps over the shoulders. I mostly needed it because we wore white see-through shirts to my Catholic grade school, and my nipples were starting to show through the thin fabric.
I hated it. I found the bra so restrictive and uncomfortable that I would take it off as soon as I came home and toss it on the floor.
It wasn’t until college that anyone other than me touched them. In the middle of a movie night in a dorm room down the hall from mine, the cute guy on the floor that everyone liked ran his hands over my modest 36Bs while we watched Bing Crosby sing his way through White Christmas. We weren’t alone – there were at least half a dozen people watching the movie in the small room – and nothing ever came of it. It was an awkward experience that left me wondering who my body belonged to.
Another college friend told me that there were “tit men” and “leg and ass men.”
“You’re the kind of girl for leg and ass men” he told me.
Thanks, dude.
For most of my life, from fourth grade on, my boobs were something to be kept hidden. I never liked wearing bras but was embarrassed to have perky nipples show through a shirt. I wore my share of bikinis though my breasts were never large enough to protrude from the tops. Mine weren’t remarkable, and I felt self-conscious of them, always trying to be sure they were covered.
Until giving birth. Devoted to breastfeeding, I often left modesty at the door. My breasts were heavy, tender, and cumbersome. They leaked like a broken faucet. I lived in my nursing sleep shirt – a soft nursing camisole that allowed for the fabric over each breast to be pulled to the side when Belle needed to nurse. It was often soaked through with milk and rarely washed. (Who has the time?) I wore it day and night. My breasts swelled in it like melons, the left always slightly bigger than the right.
I both enjoyed and felt exhausted by nursing. Finally, something to do with my breasts that didn’t feel superfluous! They actually had a purpose – not for someone else’s satisfaction or pleasure, but to perpetuate another human being’s existence!
And boy were they productive. One pumping session could produce 10 ounces of milk or more. Cumbersome and awkward and sensitive as they felt, they also felt powerful.
Women’s bodies are so powerful. Life begins in our ovaries. It grows in our uterus. We bring humans to being through our vaginal canal. And we sustain that life with milk from our breasts. No matter how many weights a man lifts, or how many protein shakes he drinks, he will never have this power. (Unless he has extensive surgery, of course. That’s another story).
Perhaps this is why women’s bodies always seem to belong to someone else. So many of my memorable experiences with my breasts have to do with others noticing my breasts. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been such a private person, or because I was so self-conscious of my body. There’s definitely a part of me that wishes I could go back and take that college boy’s hands off of me when I had never invited him to touch me in the first place. And there’s a part of me that wishes I’d worn a leotard to gymnastics on handstand day.
Once I found out that I had breast cancer, I was showing my breasts to everyone. So many doctor’s offices where I had to put on a hospital gown “open to the front,” and then open it up for a doctor who would examine my tumor and do a thorough breast exam. Everyone saw my breasts – surgeons, nurses, radiation techs – it seemed my body belonged to everyone except me. The day before my mastectomy, I went for an eight-mile run. I noticed every lift and lower of my breasts as I ran my usual path along the lake. It was the last day my breasts would ever feel familiar before over a year and a half of reconstruction that would eventually fail.
When I started writing, I wasn’t sure where I would end up. Where I’m ending now is with the thought that breasts do little for us as women, save showing us our power in nursing our young. My story of breasts is a story of vulnerability and self-consciousness. I wonder if, perhaps, my children are the only ones who I’ve ever truly felt safe sharing my body with.