Mimi Iimuro Van Ausdall

Almost Breasts

I’ve known my breasts for a long time. The three of us go way back. We got along pretty well during childhood, peacefully coexisting in various corduroy or polyester outfits. But we had a falling out when I turned thirteen or fourteen. They didn’t grow as breasts typically do for cis women. They didn’t even come out when I was sixteen. I watched my female friends’ figures become curvy, while my chest just lay there like the flatlands of Western Kansas. By age eighteen, my breasts and I were at war. I wouldn’t even touch the things I was so mad at them.

I wish I could say that I simply have a petite frame with small perky breasts that coincide well with my stature. That’s not the case. I have my dad’s broad German shoulders and tall height. Apparently, I love my dad so much that I inherited his male chest right along with his toes, toes that my mom always said let everyone know that I wasn’t, as my dad taught her to say, “the mailman’s daughter.” My chest didn’t signal to anyone that I belonged to either of my parents, or to the human adult female species. My mom had perfectly lovely A-cup breasts that fit her frame. My sister had exactly perfect, perky breasts. I guess one aunt on my dad’s side had quite small breasts, but, again, they fit her willowy frame. Mine were just flat.

One might think me a lucky girl to have such a small chest because I could perhaps go braless and let my breasts be free. Unfortunately for me, while I have no roundness to my breasts, I do have nipples, ridiculously pointy nipples that social graces suggest covering. Yes, I have seen plenty of women go braless and even allow the tip of the nipple to show. But nothing I have seen compares to the pointiness of the nipples that rest upon my strong chest. As an adult, I lamented to a friend, who suggested I use special little stickers that dancers often use to cover their nipples. The stickers are shaped like blossoms. I gave them a go. Trying to hold my nipples down with these little petals was like trying to hold up a wall hanging with a speck of cheap masking tape. My nipples were still extremely prominent, if not more so because they now looked as if two miniature worms had laid themselves down for a nap beneath two sticky blankets. They were having a little rest, but would be up any minute.

One of my high school teachers, who knew my mom and I fought a lot, had offered to take my little chest shopping for a dress for the winter formal. I had never been to such an occasion and can’t even remember being asked to go. But I had agreed to go with a guy who was sort of a friend and sort of more than a friend. My teacher was so kind, but, at one point, accidentally let slip, “Man, you just don’t have the boobs for anything.” I laughed, but was crushed and in total agreement. All the dresses would just sit on my chest—the fabric either sagging inward or resting on my body the way a masquerade mask is held to the face without the person’s face filling it out. Sure, I could stuff my bra, but I just wouldn’t because that also looked weird and this was before the bras that promise to make you look two cup sizes bigger. And I wasn’t a lingerie kind of young woman. I made fun of my friends who went to Victoria’s Secret. I noted to myself that I would never sleep with anyone who gave a crap about what underwear I wore. Not that I ever wanted at that age to show my breasts to anyone. Since I had been made fun of a handful of times for my breasts, which were not a handful, during such formative years, I began to feel my breasts were inadequate and that no one would find them attractive.

This kind of body shame runs deep in American culture for those bodies who don’t fit the norm. The norm is very restrictive for all of us. As Lindo Bacon puts it, “It’s hard to convey the all-encompassing brutality that comes with learning over and over— at four, five, twelve, fourteen, and every day of your life—that you do not belong in your body. A lifetime of slow-burning self-immolation is ignited by the realization that your body is an enemy to be coerced, controlled, and transformed into something else— ideally, something not you” (15). The alienation from one’s own body makes connection with ourselves and others deeply challenging.

The only time I ever stuffed my bra was on Halloween. I was in grad school and dressed with a group as the characters from Scooby Doo. I was Velma, the smart one with the blunt bob cut and the long orange sweater. I put on the sweater with my regular bra, and poor Velma had lost her signature curves. So, I stuffed in sock after sock into each bra cup. I looked the part, and my sock chest kept me warm in the cool October air.

To the high school dance, I ended up wearing a long flowy skirt and a sheerish, button down shirt with a camisole underneath—all black. I also put aside my usual combat boots and put on little cloth slippers. Everything was black in protest of how I felt about school dances and because I was on the emo side of crunchy. I attended the dance with said boy. I did not feel comfortable in any way. The dance itself felt like a pony show at which people displayed their clothes and dates and engaged in small talk. There was lot high-pitches “hi’s” from one popular blonde girl to another as they hugged and complimented each other’s poufy dresses. “Oh my God, your dress is SO cute,” they might say to another girl in pink lace. I despised the word “cute,” In fact, I banned it from my vocabulary for three years unless describing an infant or child. The word felt fake to me, or as Holden Caufield would say, phony. My date and I left within an hour. But, my boobs and I survived—untouched.

Then, we went to college. I gained weight, but the fat didn’t land in my breasts. I just had a round face and a belly. I think I left out the fact that this whole time from thirteen onward, I had bad acne, as in go to the doctor lots of times to try to address said pizza face. Good times. I felt unattractive, even unfeminine because not “beautiful” by very specific cultural norms. Nonetheless, I managed to meet a young woman who I liked and felt attracted to. We kissed and that part was okay. I didn’t feel desire exactly because I was so damn nervous. Why do people touch tongues? I asked myself as we kissed. That is how nervous I was. Who thinks this while trying to connect with another human being in a sexual way? She was super fit, and I was mentally suffering from the freshman 15 (or 20) that people joke about gaining. (Did I mention there was a Baskin’ Robbins shop on my campus that took my campus card payments?).

Then, she reached for my breasts. I kept thinking about my breasts and how the nipples looked as if they had already breast-fed a small army of children by the age of 19. She and I are shirt-free but pants bound. She’s kissing my right nipple and trying to gather my breast in her hand, but there is nothing to squeeze. So, she, poor girl, moves her hand to the side of my chest and pushes up on it to try to create enough tissue to make a breast. At first, I thought I was sort of imagining it due to my own insecurity about being boobless. Nope. She kept right on with the other side and throughout the fun. It was actually physically uncomfortable. I am completely mortified that this woman still walks the world and likely remembers this as one of her intimate experiences.

Looking back on this experience, it was both exhilarating to connect with someone, but there was also shame. And it wasn’t at all about being with a woman. It was about my body. I tried buying different bras and eating foods that supported growth. But what I most needed to heal was my shame about feeling that my body was not “right,” was not “feminine” or even “female.” This shame, while personal, is deeply cultural—prescribed. Shame that is profitable to peddlers of various supplements and quick-fixes for losing weight, gaining weight, enlarging sex organs, adding hair, eliminating hair, redistributing fat, cleansing the organs, elongating eye lashes, tattooing eyebrows, waxing, lasering wrinkles, firming loose skin.

With time and experience, my breasts and I became better friends. Once I was able to relax during sex, associating my breasts with pleasure has helped me feel less at war with my small chest. I now find sex to be the place where I feel the best about my body because it is helping me feel connection and joy. I’ve had only one odd instance in which a woman told me that I wasn’t her usual type and she “would have to get used to my strong chest.” And every man I have chosen to be with has always been just fine with my chest, even preferring it. As I wrote this essay, I asked my wife if she noticed my breasts when we met. “I’m more of a butt person,” she laughed. “But, yes, I noticed that you had breasts, which is good since I’m gay.” She swears that other women would kill to have the sensitivity that my breasts have. Now, I buy my little breasts pretty bras and praise their perkiness. I still require those little modesty pads though so my nipples don’t make people stare.

Nonetheless, I think about breast augmentation. Late at night, I scroll through ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of plastic surgery patients. I imagine myself having B- or C- cup breasts and feeling better in my clothes. Then, I think of the money and how wasteful it would be to spend on an elective surgery. I wonder how I would explain surgery to my kids. But, honestly, if someone dropped $8,000 in my lap and said, “This is for your surgery,” I’d likely do it. That’s how entrenched the pain of not fitting in goes. Not fitting as a woman, one of the most fundamental categories in our human culture. When babies are born, we say, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” It’s the very first thing we say to an infant. Well, unless you are me. When our babies came out, I got to announce the sexes, and I hesitated and said something like, “Oh, it looks like this baby might be a girl.” One nurse looked at me like it was a damn good thing I was not in the medical profession. For me and Jen, we just didn’t want to define our kids’ sex or gender with any certainty as one of the first things we ever said about them. It’s really odd when you think about it. Shouldn’t we say something like “Welcome! Great job making the journey, little one” or anything that isn’t about whether they have a penis or vagina or not? Or XX or XY or other variety of chromosomes.

Parenting has also made me better friends with my breasts. My breasts grew a little roundness. One friend said it’s from sympathy hormones, but I’m pretty sure it was from gaining more weight or putting collagen in my morning coffee. I want my kids to feel really chill in their own bodies. I’ve read that kids learn how to feel about their bodies by age three. That is, if the adults talk about and react to their own bodies in a particular way, the kids will likely internalize these ways. I’ve been very careful to not make negative comments about my body, and I try not to hold in my middle-aged belly. My kids are still small enough that we take baths together now and then. My own kids have helped me feel better about the parts of my body that have been negatively judged. At 2.5 years old, they spoke with the same tone of neutral acceptance about my breasts as they did about the parts of me that I am prouder of, such as my hair or long legs. “Mommy Mimi has breasts. I don’t have them. I just have two nipples,” my daughter would say. Or, “Mommy’s hair is very down [long]. Mine is short like Mama Jen’s and curly like Tio Jimmy’s,” my son would declare as he brushed my hair with great force and then patted it gently. I look at them and think every cell in their little bodies is perfect. My wife and I tell them “We love you both just as you are.” I’m sure my breasts would love to hear this said to them.