madrobins. Breasts! (Reply)

When I was eleven I briefly became convinced that I had chest cancer. My chest hurt when I ran. And while I knew that sooner or later I would have breasts, I never considered how this would occur; I may even have believed that one day the Tit Fairy would simply show up and **bamf!** endow me with breasts. And since I had a child's belief that my mother was too fragile to be taxed by the idea that she had a dying child, I didn't run the problem past her. Six months went by, during which I was sure I was breathing my last, until the process declared itself: the weird thwumming on my chest was breasts, not cancer.

Does every woman have a love-hate relationship with her breasts? I hit puberty in the sixties, when Twiggy was the fashion ideal, and I was not built like Twiggy. There were a whole mess of people (mostly adolescent boys) who believed that your breast size said something about your feet: big tits, round heels, something like that. As straight-haired people do to people with curly hair (I also have curly hair), my less-well-endowed sisters sometimes tell me how lucky I am. They've never tried to get an off-the-rack suit jacket to fit properly. They've never had a corps of construction workers commenting on dress accessories I had nothing to do with selecting. Whatever weight I've gained or lost over the years, my tits are always with me. I suppose that's a good thing; when I had kids, for the first time the damned things had some purpose other than the amusement of the opposite sex: my life as Lunch Wagon.

So now I'm at the tail end of the estrogen cha-cha, and things are changing again. No, it's not cancer. But no matter how much weight I lose, I have this distinctly, um, matronly silhouette. Not quite as bad as Margaret Harris, the late principal of my grade school, who had one of those noble bosoms that seemed to go along with orthopedic shoes and gaudy costume jewelry. But matronly. I am trying to adjust my expectations before looking in the mirror (but honestly, I've never had any luck with that kind of adjustment...for years I've been expecting to see Katharine Hepburn when I look in the mirror, or perhaps Emma Thompson, but it hasn't happened yet). I'm not really complaining--I mean, I'm not hideous. But my revising silhouette is just another proof that that bitch, Age, is having her way with me. The little wrinkles, the untidy sprinkle of grays, and the damned tits. Pfui.