BOOBS.

AUDIO QUACK (SKIP INTRO 2:40)

I began the week sitting topless with my arms up like a corkscrew. I had spotted a dent on the left boob, not a huge crater, just a tiny dip above the nipple. After inspecting them from afar and then up close, the doctor ordered me to put my arms down and confirmed that he didn’t think anything was wrong.

He said, “You have the same dip in your right one too, it’s just less noticable as it’s a smaller, and slightly different shape.”

Even in their heyday, my boobs were odd. The left is the sluggish big sister to the right. If the right was an “EEEP!” The left would be an “UMPH.” And perhaps I’m overthinking it, but they seem to stare off in different directions, like the eyes of the Cookie Monster.

I wasn’t one of these girls who would stuff tissue down my top, eagerly waiting for the day for my boobs to come. As a tomboy, I thought it would ruin my vibes. I also had seen my mum’s bras and didn’t like the idea of being clipped into something frilly for the rest of my days. It must have played a lot on my mind because I offloaded my anticipation to the Tooth Fairy.

Translation.

To Little Miss Tooth Fairy,

This is my tooth. It fell out at PE when I was playing Sleeping Lions.

I love you really much.

You can write to me if you want.

I’m getting a bra soon.

Love from Mary.

Thank You.

(As you can tell from the letter I was still a few years aways from a bra).

I had assumed that my boobs would just plop out of my chest at the same time and be shiny, plump and identical, like the women on the covers on the top shelf of WH Smith. I assumed wrong.

They came out steadily as two aching blobs. The blobs grew and grew, and soon my cute childhood nickname, ‘Pairs’ (rhymes with Mares- shortened from Mary), became too awkward for the family to say. Every day got too bouncy and uncomfortable, so it was time for my first real life bra.

There were pictures of girls in the Jack Will’s catalogue wearing these thin cotton bras with Jack Will’s printed on the elastic band. They seemed happy and cool, smiling up at their hairless, plaid-wearing boyfriends. I wanted a plaid-wearing boyfriend…so I needed a thin cotton bra from Jack Will’s.

“Call that a bra?” my mother said, when I showed her the one I wanted, then marched me to Rigby and Peller. (They were the official bra fitters to the Royals from 1960, but the relationship went tits up in 2018, when the director sold a tell-all book, and so the Royal Family ended their contract with them, and gave it to Agent Provocateu instead…..not really.)

I was taken to the back of the shop in Knightsbridge, and told to strip behind a velvet curtain. A petite woman in black came in a moment later and wrapped a measuring tape around me. She declared my number and letter, and then she stuffed my boobs into a frilly-fussy bra, and sent me out into the world in something The Queen would have worn.

How am I supposed to get plaid-wearing boyfriend in this?

At my all-girl school, my classmates were a mixed bag of confidence and dissatisfaction with what puberty had dealt them. One friend had boobs so large she was able to lift one up and kiss the top. When she got mad, she used them as a weapon, pushing us against the wall and shouting, “What’s that pipsqueak?” Some were happy that they could still sprint the 100M without any support. Others hated their boobs so much, that they wrapped them up and hid them beneath oversized jumpers.

It took me awhile to learn how to have boobs. I didn’t like how frumpy they made me look in the Jack Will’s t-shirts. Vests tops, on the other hand, distracted boys from my braces and anything I said. Backless dresses required beige stickers that made me look like an uncooked chicken. Push up bras were overkill. Bronzer made a cleveage look more cleavag-y. If I pushed my boobs up and in with my palms, and pounted in the mirror I could look like a Nuts cover girl. In my early thirties, boob talk became more about attaching breast pumps and less about attaching nipple tassles. And as a couple of my friends discovered, finding a cancerous lump is not impossible…boobs checks are essential.