On Breasts

I bought a bra! Two things precipitated this event:

First of all, my areolar regions, which prior to pregnancy resembled two tiny, unobtrusive pink mosquito bites and had remained largely unchanged since I was 12, have blossomed into these enormous reddish-brown mounds with pencil erasers poking out of them. As I told my husband the other day, I never felt like I had real grown-up nipples until recently. Before, as small as they (and my breasts) were (and still are, in the case of my breasts), a t-shirt generally satisfied any impulse towards modesty I might have.

The second, more important, change is in sensitivity level. Before, sure, if I was running around in a coarse acrylic sweater all day, going up and down many flights of stairs, there would be chafing. Nothing a camisole underneath couldn't fix, though. Now, the camisole itself would be unbearable. I've been wasting an inordinate amount of time applying various oils and creams, and attempting to scratch without actually scratching. What I really need is some kind of boob armor that hovers about an inch over my skin and allows nothing but air to touch the nips, which is what I told the salespeople at the outlet mall (or the Alamo, as my mother-in-law heard when I told her I wanted to go there).

I picked out a few different bras and tried them on. My husband came into the dressing room and giggled while I did the massively important Vigorous Rubbing Test. If my nipples hardened even a tiny bit, the bra failed. Five bras entered the Chaferdome, only one emerged. I am pretty happy with it. It makes my boobs look about a cup size bigger than they actually are, but that's a small price to pay to be able to just fucking exist in comfort.

Having my breasts look larger than they are bothers me because it took me so long to come to terms with them as they actually are, and to stop hoping that something (Prayer! Herbal supplements! The pill! Something!) would magically make them bigger. During my first appointment with my midwives back in Redmond, that was pretty much the only fear I had: that my breasts would get bigger and every shred of self-acceptance I had scraped together over the years would be swept away in a wave of flashbacks to my abusive teenage boyfriend pinching my boobs, saying, "When are you gonna grow?" Just acknowledging that fear, as is often the case, alleviated it. I'm accepting my body's changes as they come, and not expecting anything to happen in a certain way, although I'm pretty sure I'll never have large enough breasts to have to worry about people getting up-in-arms about my not breastfeeding discreetly enough.

The other day, my MIL, whom I love dearly, was complaining to me about the breastfeeding habits of my SIL (my husband's brother's wife), whom I also love dearly. There was lots of talk about shirts left up and catching eyefuls of the most hideous monstrosities imaginable, not to mention how incestuous it was that she would engage in this behavior in full view of her brother and father! I was pretty much horrified, for so many reasons. I'm a little tempted to just pull my whole damn shirt off every time my baby's hungry and I'm around her, but even then I don't know if I'd get the same level of flack. Besides, the problem isn't REALLY my MIL, although my personal world would be a whole lot brighter if she would cease her regular critiques of various aspects of other women's appearances and behavior (I am critiquing her behavior! Hypocrisy, oh my!). The problem is misogyny.

The whole thing reminds me of our classmates' perceptions of my best friend and me in middle school. We dressed pretty much identically (we shopped together and often bought the exact same clothes), we were both shameless flirts and made out with many different boys (and sometimes girls, but I'm pretty sure we both kept that under wraps for a couple more years), yet she was widely considered to be a slut, and I was widely considered to be a prude. The difference between us? Cup size. Double D versus double A. All this "discreet nursing" bullshit is just another version of that, combined with the ridiculous idea we get pummeled with so much in our culture that breasts are about sex sex and more sex. Any other function they could possibly have ideally should not exist, but if it must exist, it ought to be invisible. Tiny boobies are widely considered to be lacking in sex appeal, but (because of that) impart a virginal quality to the possessor, which makes any flat-chested ladies out there nursing their babies pretty much the mother of Jesus. Or "very discreet." Same thing.

I want nursing women to be able to nurse wherever they want, whether or not they're practiced or flat enough to do it so no one can tell. It's so hard, though, to figure out the first step to a world where women's bodies are considered to be as functional as men's, their incidental nudity as neutral. The only thing I know for sure is that requiring women to make sure every scrap of boob is hidden during breastfeeding (or the baby hidden under a blanket, or the nursing pair hidden in another room) is not that step.