Jordan was the only friend I had with whom I could share clothes and talk about my body, and that made us virtually inseparable throughout high school.
The story of the Beast begins in the garage of Brent, a senior boy who lived across the street from me. Despite being largely a flop with boys in my own grade, I spent a lot of time with the senior guys, and I brought Jordan along for all of the fun.
It was a literal girl-next-door situation, as in, I lived next door and they felt sorry for me, so they invited me over to hang out and drink their parents’ beer. And eventually, yeah, hormones made things weird, as they do. I think that’s pretty normal, it’s why little kids play doctor, right? You can’t have a room full of teenage genitals lying around and just expect people not to do anything with them.
The first time we played strip poker, I was terrified. There were five of us, and Jordan and I were the only girls. Naturally, I did not know how to play poker, which is how all good pornos start, but I escaped relatively unscathed, having just come from soccer practice, which allowed me to insist that I count each shin guard as an individual piece of clothing.
The next time did not work out as well. First losing my shirt, leaving me exposed in a bra with all the sexual appeal of Matlock. And then finally, with yet another terrible hand, the bra had to go as well.
The boys around me leaned closer into the table, eyebrows raised and lips wet. I struggled with the nine hooks along the back closure, making panicked eye contact with Jordan, who was also confined to her seat, underwearless and giggling.
I exhaled forcefully and, in one quick move, ripped the bra from my chest and tossed it with a thud on the table in front of us.
The boys looked from my face to my chest to my face again, confused.
“Where are your boobs?” Brent asked, baffled.
“They’re here.” I looked down at my lap. “Below, um. Below the table.”
“Your boobs are so big they hang below the table!” One of the guys laughed.
“So do yours,” Jordan shot back at them, always having my back and gathering our clothes to leave.
“Hey, we’re sorry.” They pleaded, standing and covering themselves with shirts and socks as we made our way to the door. Insecure me would have turned around and stayed, but Jordan wasn’t having it.
We made our way back to my house barefoot through the wet grass, pulling our clothes back onto our bodies, both of us quiet and replaying the events of the night in our heads.
“We need better bras,” I finally whispered as we crawled back through my bedroom window.
“We need to learn how to play poker,” Jordan answered.
Hanging out with the boys next door became a form of workshopping. The same way a composer and lyricist try out new productions in front of small audiences to work out the quirks and refine musical numbers, we used the guys to privately figure out how to attract and date people without any of the social consequences brought on by dealing with actual boys in our grade.
We were like Lin-Manuel Miranda, only instead of writing Hamilton, we were workshopping things like blow jobs, French kissing, and how to talk to boys. My teen years were an R-rated John Hughes movie.
To this day, I cannot tell you what size the Beast was, only that when we brought it home and put it on, it fit both Jordan and me perfectly. This was straight Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants–level shit, you guys. And it made our boobs look like magic. From the front. It made our boobs look like magic from the front; from the sides and back it was all back fat and spillover. But we were teenagers; fashion wasn’t three-dimensional for us yet. I wore a dress that didn’t zip to an honors ceremony the year before and just walked backward the whole time assuming people wouldn’t notice.
The Beast was the bra I had to pack in my bag in order to leave the house, and change into once I was away from my parents. The racer back and cup padding raised my cleavage so high up my chest that I had to push it back down in order to chew. Jordan and I passed the bra between us every weekend, through making out with Mike or getting to third base with Beau. We’d play paper, rock, scissors before games of strip poker, the loser sweeping the table fully clothed and the winner batting her eyes like a Victoria’s Secret Angel.
Our Spanish class took a trip to Mexico my junior year of high school, and Jordan and I packed the Beast in our luggage. We traded off evenings in her dancing to Will Smith songs in sweaty all-night discos, before peeling La Bestia from our damp skin, washing her in the sink, and hanging her to dry while we slept three hours before having to wake, board a non-air-conditioned bus hungover, and try not to vomit as we circled the ruins of Tulum and Chichén Itzá.
I want to add that this trip was severely underchaperoned, and we were left completely unsupervised every evening, free to wander around a foreign country, collect stamps on our hands from bars, and spend all night at dance clubs drinking giant tubes of frozen liquor. I have no idea what my parents were thinking.
During a particularly frantic white-girl dance break to “Barbie Girl” by Aqua in a discoteca in a Mérida, Mexico, the Beast sustained what would prove to be a mortal wound. The right underwire snapped, and despite our best efforts to remedy the situation with electrical tape and the travel sewing kit my mom swore I’d need for the trip, we could not save her.
Jordan and I limped (totally intoxicated because, remember, we were minors alone in Mexico) to the ocean, holding our heels in one hand, and half of the Beast in the other. We found a piece of cardboard, and using Jordan’s lighter, lit the corner on fire, placed the Beast on top, and sent it afloat into the ocean.
“I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie wooorld . . .” we slurred softly, standing on the beach hand in hand. “Life in plastic.” I hiccuped. “It’s fantastic.”
The Beast would get her Viking funeral.
BRAS. YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
Age does not bring forth knowledge when it comes to bras. Nor does it bring better boobs to put inside of them.
I swear, if I played strip poker right now, I could be sitting on a barstool, laying my cards down on a coffee table, and my nipples would still hang below the table. This is just the hand I’ve been dealt; I have large, heavy breasts.
At eight years old, I tried to bind them down with ACE bandages; at seventeen, I stuffed them into any push-up bras I could get my hands on; and then somewhere around age twenty-five, they began to rest comfortably in my armpits every time I lay down.
When it comes to boobs, we always want what we can’t have. I see women with smaller chests and am envious of the thought of going braless or wearing a halter top without fighting a strapless bra. I’d love to make it through a summer without having to put deodorant around my chest or powder over the rashes I get from the heat and sweat.
I have a friend who constantly laments that her nipples get hard while she’s working in her cold office, and I think, Yeah, that never happens to me because my nipples point down and are sometimes wrapped around the underwire of my bra.
I went to a fraternity party in college once with a Skittle taped to the inside center of each cup, trying to look like I had hard nipples. It totally worked the first hour, until I got too sweaty from dancing, the tape got damp, and the Skittles started to migrate all over the place. It was like my boobs were googly eyes. What I wouldn’t give to walk around in a shirt too thin to hide actual hard round nipples looking youthful and sexual and womanly.
It’s funny what we pick up on out of envy, right? Sometimes we stuff our bras, sometimes we make fake nipples out of candy . . . listen, boob insecurity can make you crazy.
As someone who’s been in a bra for twenty-eight years, I feel I have enough seniority and experience to confidently tell you that all this is normal; bras are terrible, and everything you know about them is wrong.
There was a period of time, not long ago, when my bras tried to kill me. I’d be doing an everyday task, and midmovement, snap!
You know those medical-miracle news stories where
they show X-rays of dudes with nails in their heads that somehow missed every vital area? One day you will see my chest cavity on the screen with a U-shaped wire narrowly missing my beating heart. That or one of those “oh crap, what’s in my rectum” X-rays. Andy and I are into butt stuff, it could go either way.
But in terms of boobs, while a bra is the most important thing I can put on to support them, doing so has meant that for the first three decades of my life, I have been in a seriously abusive relationship with my breasts.
I want to be really poetic here and say, “Oh, but they are beautiful vessels that nourished my children,” but the truth is, they suck. They are bulky, they make my neck and back hurt, and even though it takes no less than a decade to grow out a set of bangs, the single hair on my right boob can go from root to rattail in a twelve-hour span. I have a lot of reasons to dislike my boobs. But it turns out, I just didn’t understand how to take care of them.
THE CARE AND KEEPING OF YOUR BOOBIES
Like I said in the beginning of this book, I don’t want this to be some sort of snore-fest how-to manual, but some things are really important, and measuring for a bra properly is one of them. Plus, we’re friends now, and this is what friends do. We share clothes, hold each other’s hair in the bar bathroom, and pinkie-swear to always make sure each other’s boobs look amazing.
Why is it important to wear the correct-size bra? Well, for starters, you’re going to look thinner. Wearing the correct-size bra added three inches to my torso, which had previously been covered by sagging boobs. By default, your clothes will also look better, and you’ll stand up straighter because all of the weight you were previously dragging around with your shoulders will now be perfectly balanced in your cups and band.
I have been professionally measured twice, and both times I left with a bag full of expensive 36 DDDs. Yet I was still spilling over the tops of the cups of my bras, wire snaps, sore, red indents in my shoulders, and side boob fat.
Is this where I line up for the bra burning? Because these things suck.
It turns out, after watching numerous YouTube videos, which is how my generation learns to do things like lay tile flooring, make sushi, or squirt, I was being measured for a bra in the completely wrong manner. Which, looking back, makes sense. Every time I was measured by someone, they did so while I was wearing a bra. How on earth can you tell what size my boobs are by wrapping a tape measure around the crappy bra I already owned and walked in wearing?
Properly measuring yourself for a bra is something you can do completely by yourself in the privacy of your own house, and that can be done in three easy steps.
Now take your bra off and lock the door, because yeah, you can do this in your house, but it’s not a sexy thing for anyone to walk into, the same way I’ll never let Andy catch me shaving my toes.
You’ll need a fabric-measuring tape, a pencil, and a piece of paper.
1. Take the measuring tape, wrap it around your rib cage where your bra band would sit, and exhale. Write down that number, it’s your band size. Mine is 38.
2. Bend over at a ninety-degree angle. Yup, your boobs should be dangling and it’s suddenly coming back to you why you always wear a bra during doggy style. Wrap the measuring tape loosely around your back and dangling bust, and write that number down. Mine is 49.
3. Now it’s time for some math. Take those two numbers and subtract them (i.e., 49 – 38 = 11). Now take that number and check out the chart below to determine your cup size. Tip: Most online ordering is done in UK sizing, which is way more accurate than U.S. sizing, govna!
Differences in
Inches:
US Cup Size
UK Cup Size
1˝
A
A
2˝
B
B
3˝
C
C
4˝
D
D
5˝
DD or E
DD
6˝
F
E
7˝
G
F
8˝
H
FF
9˝
I
G
10˝
J
GG
11˝
K
H
12˝
L
HH
13˝
M
J
14˝
N
JJ
15˝
O
K
I am a 38H. AAAAAAAAAAA-CH. I’ll admit that when I first measured myself correctly, I went through various stages of grief, such as throwing the measuring tape across the room and calling it a liar, crying, texting my friend Meredith and telling her everything on the Internet was stupid, putting my head between my knees and breathing slowly, and then eventually accepting the truth.
Then I did the next naturally rational thing and googled what the average cup size of a porn star was. It turns out, the answer to that question was a B, which didn’t quite match the Debbie Does Dallas stereotype in my head.
That B cup makes my H cups sound downright cartoonish. Seriously, who would be into these things besides the cast of Porky’s?
As a kid, I spent a lot of time sleeping over at friends’ houses while my parents worked, and as a result, I became like “one of the family” to a few different sets of pals. One in particular, Olivia, lived with her grandmother Dot, a tiny old woman who stood about as high as my collarbone and had gigantic boobs. She was easily 70 percent breasts, and was always spilling food on her chest and complaining that her back hurt. I remember going to the bathroom and seeing her giant shiny nude bras hang-drying across the shower rod.
When I think of 38H boobs, I think of Dot.
This idea that society has put in our heads that the perfect woman has a big ass, tiny waist, and DDs is not an accurate one, for many, many reasons. But the main one is that the pictures of the women we see that are built like that don’t actually have double-D breasts. Their breasts are much, much larger. But admitting you are a 42F doesn’t sound as sexy as saying you’ve got double Ds. Hence the apprehension about being properly measured.
UGH, JUST TRY IT. I hear it almost every time.
“Um, yeah, I am not a [insert larger size here].”
Actually, you probably are. The measuring system we’ve all been subject to isn’t accurate; it’s just, you know, available. I was being fit into what was available to me in stores based on what society thinks is an appropriate size to offer, and I accepted it because I was terrified of being abnormal or large or different . . . when the fact is, I’m not any of those things. And neither are you.
IT MIGHT TAKE YOU A MINUTE. As a woman, I’ve experienced virtually zero standard of sizing across any other form of fashion. I can purchase the same-size jeans from three different stores, but depending on each brand’s personal fit, sizing chart, and the country the jeans were produced in, none of them will fit the same. The same thing applies to bras. You might have to try a few different brands to find the one that best fits your assets.
SCOOP AND SWOOP. You know that stuff that oozes out of the sides of your bra? That’s not armpit fat (okay, maybe it’s a little armpit fat), that is actual boob. And it turns out, it’s supposed to be scooped up and sit in the cup of the bra. All you have to do is slightly lean forward, and scoop all the breast tissue out from under your armpit, and push it forward.
If you try my bra-measuring method and find the bra is too big, it may be because you haven’t swooped and scooped yet. Try it before you e-mail me to tell me I’m an idiot.
BUT EVERYTHING IS UGLY. Yeah, for a while there, larger bra options were total dogs. But all that is changing. I am a big huge fan of Curvy Kate and Panache bras.
JERRY SPRINGER FINAL THOUGHT. I carry a tape measure in my purse. Andy cringes when I pull it out in department stores or on the TSA security lines at th
e airport. I talk about bras the same way Jehovah’s Witnesses show up at your house to remind you there’s no hell.
And I am perfectly okay with being the crazy lady who wants to wrap a tape measure around you if it means that you’ll feel good about your boobs. Not wanting to be a certain bra size is not the same as not being that size. I promise you, I will never guess what your bra size is in a well-fitting bra, but I can tell what size you aren’t in a bra that doesn’t fit. (Please also apply this anecdote to jeans, bodycon dresses, leggings, and mouth retainers.)
CHAPTER 5
If These Spanx Could Talk
A few years back, Andy and I were invited to the wedding of one of his college friends. The affair was to be held at a sailing club in Chicago. Faaaancy! This was underscored by the fact that it was an adults-only reception, which I know can get a little dicey for people who believe children should be invited everywhere, but we are not those people, and happily chest-bumped at the thought of a weekend alone in a hotel, drinking to excess and not being in charge of cutting up anyone else’s meat.
It was also one of those situations where Andy was asked to be a member of the wedding, but I was not, and that was totally fine. I didn’t really know the bride very well, and the fewer bridesmaid dresses in my life, the better, as you can probably guess. It was, however, a black-tie event. Faaaaancy! As such, it was not the type of event we normally find ourselves attending.
I purchased a black satin trumpet-cut gown for this swank shindig, and due to the thinness of the fabric, I knew I would need some serious shape wear. I typically avoid such torture in the summer, as my body temperature runs hot and I turn into a big wet heat rash.
Also, shape wear sometimes makes me feel a little trapped and claustrophobic and my stomach skin gets all, “If I don’t exhale and stretch all the way out right this second, I’m going to fucking lose it. I swear to God, Brittany, get me out of this elastic coffin or I will fucking kill you and everyone around you.”
The Clothes Make the Girl Page 6