Month: November 2010

Busting Out All Over

There are three little words that every big-busted woman out there has grown to know and love. “I’m up here.”

In the interest of precision and honesty, I will tell you that at current measurements, I am a 36H. To give you a bit of context for that, picture a fairly normal ribcage and stack two cantaloupes on it side by side. I don’t blame you if you can’t quite picture it, though. Even Google has a hard time with it. For comparison, I just typed “36C” into Google Images.


Mostly breast-related, right? Now try “36H”.


After several pages of results, there’s nary a tit to be seen. When I typed in “36H breasts” (an activity I highly recommend if you’re at work, by the way), the results may as well have come back like this.


It’s aggravating, to say the least.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my body. Aside from the back problems, I kind of dig the buxom look. Strap those suckers up right and I can fill out a sweater so well you’d speak in tongues. It’s not the breasts. It’s the accompanying… unpleasantness.

The indignity starts as soon as I get dressed in the morning. Where a woman of more modest proportions has bras, I have buttresses. I open the drawer to see plain black and beige staring back at me like a stern German governess. The odd bit of cheerful bright lace peeks out, but the price tag relegates them to special occasion status. Sorry, flirty blue, sultry red, pretty purple. I can’t play today. You are a Sometimes Bra. Fräulein needs to go to work now.

Wait, let me back up a second. Did I mention the price tag? Because shelling out the equivalent of one of my utility bills to look like someone’s tattooed grandmother under my clothes is not an experience I particularly relish. It is of no help whatsoever that when I go into La Senza (the Canadian equivalent of Victoria’s Secret and just as incompetent, if not moreso), I am set upon by some clueless salesgirl who is dead set on selling me whatever bra is the next big thing. The last time I was there looking for underwear, this exchange followed.

Perky Salesgirl: Hi! Can I interest you in the new WatersexxxTek bra? It features a triple push-up with water-filled inserts and a clever hidden atomizer filled with our newest perfume, Fancy Pomegranate Slut!

Me: No thanks. I’m just here to look at the underwear. Where are those little Brazilian cheeky things that are really ass-flattering?

Perky Salesgirl: Are you sure? It’s available in all 216 hexadecimal colour codes!

Me: No thank you. You guys don’t actually carry my size, so I’ll just continue looking at the underwear, thanks. Where are the ones I was looking for?

Perky Salesgirl: (confused) We don’t carry your size? We have everything up to DD-cup!

Me: Ha. Hahaha. No. I’m an H-cup. The underwear…?

Perky Salesgirl: …are you sure a DD-cup wouldn’t fit?

Me: I… what? Yes, I’m sure. Having had them since elementary school, I know where my tits are and are not willing to go. They will bound cheerfully into well-fitted bras, the odd corset, and into the capable hands of professorial-looking dudes in glasses. They will balk like a spooked horse at going into strapless dresses, halter tops, games of strip poker since 2007, and I can tell you as sure as I’m standing here that they are not going anywhere close to a DD-cup bra.

Perky Salesgirl: I can check in the back for an E-cup…

Me: No. Please find me an employee who will help me find what I’m looking for. Preferably one that is of voting age.

And so forth.

It’s the comments that really seal it, though. What’s weird is that the worst of it doesn’t come from men. Men stare too long sometimes, but only the most juvenile and crass will say something. Pretty much all the worst and most demeaning comments come from other women.

“Ugh, thank God I don’t look like that. I don’t know how she stands up.” (Just fine, thanks. You’d find it doesn’t impede my right hook much, either.)

“Holy shit, you’ve got really big boobs.” (Holy shit! So I do. I managed not to look down once since puberty.)

“Wow, Jugs! No trouble to tell what the guys like you for, is it?” (Thank you! I didn’t realize intelligence and a daffy sense of humour was as obvious upon first glance as being a shallow bitch!)

“Are they real? Can I touch them?” (They are imaginary and no you may not.)

I probably sound bitter and I don’t mean to. It’s just that I’ve had a total of seventeen years of this kind of bullshit, and it gets tiresome.  It’s not much fun being remembered by casual acquaintances as “the one with the tits”. It’s kind of irritating to be treated like Sideshow Boob by strangers.

Still, it’s hard not to smile on those good days, the tight sweater days. A little vexation and a whole lot of va-va-voom. Not the worst trade-off.

Movember

Pencil. Handlebar. Fu Manchu. Pornstache. No matter what iteration it comes in, I have a complicated relationship with the mustache.

It could be daddy issues, I guess. My father can grow a full beard just by thinking about it really hard over his morning coffee. Of course, having been born in the mid-1980s meant that my first blurry exposure to the face of the man who sired me involved a pretty magnificent ‘stache. Like a duckling imprinting, my tiny newborn brain made an irreversible connection between “mustache” and “Dad”. He shaved when I was about a year old and Mom tells me that I stood in the crib screaming bloody murder at his newly fresh-faced appearance. That is not my father, my banshee wailing seemed to say. That is an impostor with a visible upper lip. Unaccaptable. UNACCEPTABLE.

Over the years, I saw his mustache come and go. Beards arrived and left again. Once an ill-advised goatee dropped in like an unwanted houseguest and only after weeks of a two-pronged attack of pointed ignoring (Mom’s) and impassioned begging (mine) did it leave again. A few years ago, he decided that he’d gone too grey to really pull off facial hair without looking like an elder statesman, so he’s been clean-shaven ever since. Still, the little duckling part of my brain kept the association of the mustache with the paternal. Because of that, It should come as no surprise to anyone (except maybe Freud) that this means for the most part, I am incapable of being attracted to men with mustaches.

Fig. 1.1: Science
Fig. 1.2: Tom Selleck

With this in mind, you can understand that while I support Movember, it basically means an entire month of coming face-to-face with men who are now the human equivalent of a cold shower. Even (especially) men I would normally find very attractive. Because now you just remind me of my dad. I’m having a hard time coming up with an equivalent that women could do to provoke the same response in men. The only thing I can equate it to is if suddenly your girlfriend showed up on your doorstep with a frosted perm and a reindeer festivest. (I can only guess that hardcore hipsters are at their leisure on this front. I don’t know what the hell it is you people get up to, but from what I can see it’s de rigeur in your circles to dress like slutty nursing home escapees, so I don’t even know what to say to you.)

Yet in spite of my mental block with the mustache, I can’t help but feel impressed by some of the ones I’ve seen. A guy I struck up a conversation with downtown last weekend was channeling Teddy Roosevelt. One mild-mannered law student I know is rocking a full-on Hulk Hogan. At least if you’re going to grow a mustache, go hard or go home. If all you can muster are eleven puny hairs above your lip, just… stop. You’re only hurting society.

So go on with your bad selves, guys. Keep that small section of your face warm for this month. But when December comes, please shave it. Better yet, grow a full beard. Both Santa and Jesus know that’s where it’s at.

(Support Movember? Then donate!)