The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs

by Dawn O'Porter

  As you can see they’re looking much better. I have actual cleavage! My mates are pretty jealous. I’ve never been so groped in my life – everyone wants to cop a feel! They all seem obsessed with them being hard – I don’t think Mean Girls helped the rep of implants! Basically, at first they looked and felt awful, like I said, but they’re MUCH softer now. After much boob squishing, I don’t think they’re all that different to Cherise’s real ones.

  Cherise thinks she can tell the difference between real ones and fake ones but I don’t think you can unless you get close up and personal. I’ve road tested them a couple of times in bars and stuff. We went out a week or so after I’d had the dressing off – just around Covent Garden. The difference was insane – for the first time in my life I’m catching guys talking to my chest instead of my face. I honestly don’t know if I’m offended or not! It’s like, ‘My eyes are up here, guys!’ It actually makes you a bit paranoid. You don’t know if the reason they’re staring is because they like what they see or whether they’re trying to work out if they’re fake. I mean, I don’t think they look fake, but I suppose when I get naked with a guy, he’ll see the scars. I hadn’t really thought of that. At some point when I meet a new guy I suppose I’ll just have to be honest. I think a lot of guys quite like fake boobs anyway – it’s a Pamela Anderson thing from when they were younger.

  The whole idea was to have more confidence and I think I do. Clothes fit much better now that I’ve got something to fill them. I haven’t really bought anything new because all my old clothes feel new with a bit of cleavage anyway. I definitely look better.

  When we went out around Clapham last weekend I did sort of wonder if I’d be fighting men off with a stick, but it was pretty much the same old, just with more guys checking me out, which is fine. I didn’t get chatted up any more than normal, really, and Cherise was still the centre of attention. I think I’ve decided I could have three boobs and she’d still be the centre of attention. I can’t lie – the first time we went out and I didn’t pull, I was a bit disappointed. I’d built it up to be a big deal in my head … and then it was a massive anti-climax.

  That said, it’s only been a couple of months and I couldn’t go out at first anyway. I need to give it more time. I would definitely feel happy getting naked with a guy now if the right one came along. I do think it’ll be easier to get a boyfriend now I’ve had them done.

  You know what I think it is? All that build-up – like five years of waiting, and then the worrying about the operation, and then all the soreness and the scars, and all the money, I suppose I thought it was going to be a bigger deal. After all that stress, I expected the world to change, like there should be a parade or something, but it’s business as usual. I’ve been back at work for ages, everyone’s pretty much stopped caring that I had it done – even my mum quite likes them now. I thought everything would be more different, you know what I mean?

  There’s no doubt that my boobs look better – I honestly cannot count how many hours I’ve stared at them for – but they’re not perfect. I’m a bit pissed off because after all that grief, you would want them to be perfect, right? If you look closely, Ashley is still a tiny bit bigger than Mary-Kate and I reckon the nipple is a little higher too – although I’m clearly a bit obsessed with them.

  I don’t know, I guess we’ll see. I will have to wait a year or two, according to Si, but I might get them done again. Perhaps just a little bit bigger.

  I really hope this has been helpful for any of you out there that are thinking about getting your boobs done. Overall I’m really glad I had my surgery. My top tips are: Get a surgeon you really like, find one that’s done ops for the NHS (they’re better), and make sure you’ve got someone around to do everything for you right after the op. They are like a million times better, even if I’m not a hundred per cent, and I’m definitely happier. I wanted bigger boobs and that’s what I got.

  Love and hugs

  Becca xxx

  A Diamond-Encrusted Bubble-Gum-Flavoured Speckled Glittered Brightly Coloured Erotic Eye-Wateringly Bouncy yet Sensible, Comfortable Hammock (with pockets)

  LAURA DOCKRILL

  Mum, let’s pretend we’re bakers.

  It’s 5.30 a.m. and luckily, for us, the cakes have just come out

  hot

  from the oven.

  It’s OK; you lie there, because I KNOW you’re tired,

  And I’ll sit here, on your tummy,

  with all of my five-year-old body weight

  and decorate the cakes. Otherwise referred to as …

  Your boobs.

  Of course I never wanted to eat them. I just wanted to

  roll

  them

  and squeeze them.

  And attack them.

  Because I didn’t have them.

  And when she ‘reminded’ me that once upon a time, before the plastic joy of McDonald’s,

  that they fed me! I DRANK from them, with my mouth?

  Well, I was horrified.

  And I never wanted to see them again.

  They were ‘udders’.

  Embarrassing ones. With personalities.

  I hated seeing friends’ mums’ ones even more, accidentally; in a changing room,

  All baked-egg-like and soggy and depressed and wilting,

  Like a flabby rejected exotic plant that nobody read the ‘How To Look After’ manual of.

  When they (the breasts) chased me, and caught me, got me, in the kiss chase menace of puberty, I fought, proper.

  I said

  ‘NO! Don’t give me those’ and took to a bra like a fly to a pond. Drowning, terribly.

  It meant I was growing up

  and I would have to watch whilst my sister

  got tickles and ice cream

  whilst I awaited Santa’s stocking of sanitary towels and M&S vouchers.

  Thanks Papa Chrimbo.

  Cheers for that.

  I’m about to explode.

  Like a bomb of snake blood.

  Then suddenly, they become your thing almost overnight.

  They are yours.

  Flat-chested girls say,

  ‘How did you do that?’ about your boobs, and you say

  ‘Just by being alive and eating loads of stuff.’

  And that’s pretty good and you

  look at slightly chubby blokes and think

  Thank God I’m not a bloke because they aren’t allowed two

  sockets for extra fat to dress up in a balcony bra

  and you are proud but guilty.

  Dockers’ Knockers.

  Inside I just wanted to be Tinkerbell actually.

  We want ‘tits’ like girls in French films who

  shove vest tops on with NOTHING underneath,

  who hop and spring around like newly born lambs,

  boobies like ice-cream cones,

  like hiccups,

  like moths,

  with nipples like tiny perfect kidney beans.

  Those girls want ‘bangers’ with big moose-like swells,

  orbiting their own selves like naked gorilla heads, stuffed into swelling stinging frothy elastic,

  that punch your lights out every time you go to switch the light out,

  black eyes but … look at them boobs.

  You go to your friends’ houses and you swoon at their

  little cup-cake paperette bras dangling on the bathroom door, like dinky patterned bonnets for Barbie dolls that almost make you weep, they are so pretty.

  Meanwhile, should you and your friends ever get stuck on a desolate cliff?

  You could certainly attempt catapulting them across the world to safety with the capacity of your BRASSIERE, that’s right, I dropped the Brassiere bomb, code word for flubbery, gargantuan, goblinesque, dinosauric, vacuous pit of Bermuda Triangle, no man’s land.

  It’s a contraption.

  It’s a bit of equipment. That’s not pretty.

  I also recognise the advantages.
<
br />   My bra is like a rucksack and can hold loads of stuff inside it.

  Because my mum wore low-cut tops and let her boobs harass the eyes of strangers

  I have always kept mine relatively under wraps

  like the magazines that come in bags that you’re not allowed a free flick through before purchase.

  My chest is a gamble.

  I wish you could eat it.

  Your bra.

  A bra.

  Or at least chew from it.

  It must have another purpose other than just like Clinton’s monetising on Valentine’s cards,

  making men and women curdle sour everywhere,

  Well … bra shops do the same, with their variety,

  they are all too small,

  too ugly or just too rubbish,

  however,

  we need them

  because there is NO better feeling in the world than taking a bra off after a hard day’s work of bra wearing. And I’ve tried a lot of feelings.

  Bra shopping for big boobs is horror of the head syndrome when every answer is a no.

  Because how many hammocks are beautiful? The title of this piece is actually an advert. That is what I am looking for.

  When you finally swan out and the right bits go where they should,

  in and out like the violin they always promised …

  You feel like a goddess

  mixed in with a mistress

  mixed in with a fraud

  but mostly a bit like a woman.

  Which I guess is allowed.

  And you are thankful.

  That you ‘got it’ and ‘you know it’

  But then suddenly,

  as if all women are WWE Wrestlers battling it out for the one golden belt that is their perfect physique, of course,

  it gets taken (I say taken I mean stolen) away from you the moment you found it

  and then you yourself wait to be woken up at 5.30 a.m.

  and have some other new weird child of your own,

  playing bakers with your tits.

  JENNY ECLAIR

  I used to have a line in my stand-up where I described my breasts as having let me down so much that I now referred to them as ‘Brutus and Judus’. The truth is a lot more mundane. They are sturdy and workman-like and mostly fairly reliable. They are not the kind of bosoms that fall out of a bikini top at the sight of a third-division footballer; they are pretty sensible and I kennel them in a Sloggi non-wired 34A cup bra.

  If anything my breasts are slightly Nordic. I know this for a fact because the only time I’ve seen breasts like mine, en masse, was when I went swimming in Finland – all the women there had identical breasts to mine. I like to think there is something of the Viking about them – or maybe I mean troll?

  Anyway, as I say, they’ve never given me much grief, until last year when at the age of fifty-one I was called for my first mammogram. To be honest it wasn’t a big deal, we trotted down the road, me and the tits, got them squashed against a screen for scanning and came home.

  It was mid-January, I’d finished panto, was doing shifts on the Loose Women panel and had just booked a week in Miami. Everything was tickety boob, Loose Women had even been nominated for an NTA – a National Television Award, no less! All I had to do was sort out some kind of ensemble/frock for the bash, but I had a week to shop. There was no rush.

  Then the letter came. The mammogram result was suspect, and I needed further investigation. They gave me a date to come back and get checked out. It was scheduled for when we were in Miami.

  I phoned the hospital to explain, expecting them to say that when I got back from the States would be cool. They didn’t – they said I should be seen before I went; in fact I should be seen by the end of the week, Then they said that if further ‘exploration’ found something more sinister then Miami could possibly be off the agenda as I might require immediate treatment.

  Some things make you go cold, they make you go clumsy, they make your head feel like it’s underwater and you can’t hear properly. I felt sick all the way down to my knees.

  I told my partner and I told my daughter and I told my sister. I didn’t tell anyone else and I couldn’t be bothered to buy a new frock for the NTAs which were being held at the O2 arena the night before I was due to be thoroughly X-rayed. I did however decide that going to the awards would be a welcome distraction and cobbled together a last-minute outfit from the back of my wardrobe. It wasn’t great – it involved a silver dress and a vintage coat and some snot-green tights, which I thought gave the outfit a Tilda Swinton twist but just looked a bit mad. I went to the O2 with all the other Loose Women (we didn’t win) and at the end of the night when I couldn’t find my cab to come home, I may have done some swearing and foot stamping in the car park – but really I was just very frightened of the morning.

  My sister came to King’s College Hospital with me. She made me walk – I’d have got the bus but she was right, it is only three stops from my house.

  An hour later we were walking home – correction, I was skipping. The lump was a collection of tiny water-filled cysts – very common, we were told. Huzzah! Never has south London looked more beautiful, never have my nearest and dearest been more relieved, never have I looked forward to a holiday more … Miami we were on our way.

  A week or so later, we were at Heathrow. Browsing through the magazines in WHSmith I spotted a headline which screamed, ‘Worst Dressed Celebs at the NTAs’! And there I was, lumpy in my vintage coat, non-matching scarf and saggy snot-green tights. All I needed to complete the mad bag woman look was a pram full of cats and some rubbish.

  As I looked at that photo and I remembered the worry and the upset and the gut-wrenching fear, I realized I couldn’t give a shit about these bitchy magazines with their horrible stupid lists. Me and my tits were off to Miami, and I laughed all the way to the plane.

  SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR

  Boobs. In the words of the Bloodhound Gang, hooray for boobies.

  I have two. They are OK. Not amazing, but not terrible. I have hoisted them in bras, fed three babies with them, wished they were bigger and felt them for lumps, because lumps are the serious side of boobs. My grandma died of breast cancer when I was eleven. I still miss her now.

  When I was asked to write about my relationship with my breasts I was a bit perplexed. I love them and yet, it’s complicated. Like most girls I have not always reacted in a positive way to my boobs. When I was about ten or eleven the first girls in my class began ‘developing’, as we called it, and began needing to buy their first bras. I found most of the process mortifying. Cuddling my parents was harder as the new existence of a chest came between us figuratively and literally. I felt I was betraying them by not being a little girl anymore. I then started wearing training bras which my dad – probably pretty mortified himself – called ‘bib tops’. This was pretty cringey.

  As I entered my teens I began to embrace my new curves a little more. They weren’t going away so I knew I’d better get a handle on them. Aged about thirteen I remember asking my mum if I could go and get a real bra. We finally went to get one and I was a 34D. I felt rather smug about that as she hadn’t thought I needed a bra yet. Bib tops were still OK by her. Suddenly – ha! I had a proper bra size and they sounded like they weren’t too small, either. This was what I wanted, right? My friends and I then proceeded to spend most of our late teens wearing Wonderbras. It seemed to be that we all wanted a killer cleavage. God, Wonderbras were uncomfy. Fortunately my twenties introduced me to getting properly measured, balconettes, comfort and a happier, less aggressive rack. I haven’t looked back except for the times after having my babies when I have endured the joy of nursing bras. Until that point, you don’t think there’s going to be a time in your life when you will wear whatever it takes to get your boobs out whenever and wherever you are just to feed that baby.

  I think all sizes have pros and cons. I have experienced mine big and small. With my pregnancies I’ve got to try o
ut having really massive boobs. Quite fun and I always miss them a little when they go. That being said, what I have now is fine. A handful but not out of hand.

  So what’s round the corner? Hopefully we still have some fun times ahead. I will still be hoisting them in bras, possibly feeding another baby with them one day and checking them for lumps. When all is said and done it’s the serious side of boobs it comes down to. I hope they stay healthy. I really do miss my grandma.

  CAROLINE FLACK

  When I was growing up I only had one boob. It was fairly disturbing as I was the only one who knew, and I used to stuff the other side of my bra with tissue. It wasn’t until one day when it just got too lopsided that I ran down to the kitchen where my mum was making carbonara and shouted out in despair, ‘I’VE ONLY GOT ONE BOOB.’ Mum sat me down and told me it was totally normal. Weirdly, within a couple of months I grew a second boob and all was OK. You can rest assured now that I have two fully functioning boobs.

  KRISTIN HALLENGA

  If boobs could talk they’d demand you to stop being so darn silly. They’d ask you why it is you squeeze them into bras that are quite obviously the wrong size for you and make them feel like they are about to spill over the top and into oblivion. I’m pretty sure they’d also wonder why you or your partner don’t give them more attention either; and when they say attention, they mean checking for the signs and symptoms of breast cancer on a regular basis so that you could catch the disease nice and early. They’d tell you to stop being such a ninny because nine out of ten lumps are in fact nothing sinister, but knowing what it is for sure, NOW, is the best defence against the disease that kills so many of your boobs mates every year. Your boobs need you, and until they have a voice (which, quite frankly would be a bit weird, wouldn’t it?) I will be telling you and the rest of Britain to check them and give them the love they deserve. Something I stupidly didn’t do and now live with breast cancer at twenty-seven because it was detected very late. So, love thy boobies, people!