The real story on really big breasts is about more than "Damn, bro, look at those." Once upon a flat-chested time, I thought 34B breasts were about right. Probably some regular-looking TV character was known to have 34Bs, and it stayed with me. A-cups were too little; Cs sounded big; Ds were impossible. DD was a punchline. Then, with some years and the assistance of the birth-control pill, I grew a pair, and that long-lost 34B seemed comically small. Now, at a DDD or E, I’m on the lower end of big-titted, but big-titted all the same. Having large breasts is like being very tall, or having famous parents: in many ways, a great advantage, but with secret problems attending it. When Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks posed at the Golden Globes with her significant breasts propped up and out (the only good bit about a dress that was otherwise unkind to her beautiful, unusual body), she transfixed the viewing and Twittering audience, more than she has in any previous red-carpet appearance. I was moved, you know, sexually, but also empathetically. Catherine*, a woman I interviewed who has EE breasts, says, “Large breasts are so rare in the conventional Western model/actress world.... When someone like Christina Hendricks comes along who doesn’t fit the overtly sexualized porn image, it’s confusing and fascinating because we can’t help but sexualize her.... You have to expect that large breasts are going to be ogled, touched, admired, talked about.”We are collectively tit-notized. Big breasts are seductive in a way that’s beyond sex, maybe even beyond the mommy-milk connection. There is the obvious, banal power of big breasts. I can reliably change the dynamic between me and any given male with the release of a button. Watching my breasts move when I walk or have sex or even briefly touch them, makes me feel hot. To the same degree that large breasts are a central signal of femininity, they also suggest something undone, whorish and threatening about their owner. Laura*, a 30E, says, “I had one dick of an ex-boyfriend [who would] say ‘You’re swinging low’ when I didn’t wear a bra to shame me into putting one on. Isn’t that lovely?” Joanne*, a 38J, gets shitty comments from professionals. “If I’m getting a massage or doing a yoga class [they sometimes say] ‘Are they real?’ or ‘Don’t they get in the way?’ I don’t randomly ask people how they feel about their large nose and whether or not they think about getting it fixed.”The burdens of XL titays go beyond getting cruised constantly. My chest isn’t so much wide as it is high and deep, which results in too much cleavage when I don’t mean to have it, and way too much cleavage when I do. My everyday necklace, laced with charms from my Nana and best girlfriends and a first crush, usually ends up trapped between the cannons by the end of the workday. Cleavage is a natural happenstance of big boobs, but is also considered inappropriate. I sometimes have to point out that they just go that way. That’s where they live. It’s not my fault that the physiological way my breasts sit is somehow lascivious. Big-breasted happiness definitely requires hardware. “Good bra stores make you feel normal and as though you should be drinking a cocktail while you enjoy the bra experience,” says Laura. The purchase of a high-priced piece of R&D-ed tit-fabric requires a very handsy fitting. Says Laura: “I hate when I tell people I spend $100-plus on a bra and they act like I’m a princess or something. You and your 34B and your $30 bras from La Senza can eat me.” After spending the better part of three recent work nights bra shopping, I triumphantly straddled my dude and offered a five-point demonstration of my favourite one, without all the bows, beading and general flair that bras for big breasts usually have. “Yeah, it makes ’em stick up good,” he said. Friends and familiars of the big-breasted will also know about the pain, the sore backs and permanent shoulder dents. I like my breasts but resent that walking to the coffee shop in the morning without a bra on genuinely hurts (worse if there are stairs), and during my boobs’ monthly transformation into giant, milk-white nuclear titty-bombs that sting when a door slams, I pine for A-cups. Danielle*, formerly an F-cup and now a post-surgical C, says, “before my breast reduction, I would have to wear a bra during sex. Not out of self-consciousness, but out of discomfort and honest-to-goodness pain.” Because very big breasts look so appealing and soft, that’s not what we’re thinking about when Joan and her mesmerizing power-curves swan around Sterling Cooper. Even those of us who know better.* Names have been changed. » Tell us about the breasts you have or the ones you love in the Comments section below or letters@eyeweekly.com. Follow @EYEWEEKLY on Twitter.
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