she was taking, a side effect of which was ball courts with them braless, without a fuller breasts; she was now a C. Buzzing twinge of pain, without having to think of Proud off two Bloody Marys, I demanded that them at all. she guess my size, before gleefully whis- When I started to mess around with pering it: “32DDD!” “I don’t believe you,” boys, I noticed that my breasts were de- owners she said. “It’s true,” I replied, grinning pendably responsive to touch. “Start Big or small, utilitarian or with the same kind of satisfaction you get up here,” I’ve been known to mumble, when you reveal that a fawned-over dress or sometimes just silently pick up and decorative, scarred or is from H&M. transfer a male hand that is moving too unblemished, it’s about You might think I should learn to quickly for my tastes. What pleasures embracing what you’ve flaunt my form, stereotypers be damned. they’ve afforded me! So much so that I got. Herewith, five stories But it’s hard to get dressed in the morn- recently bought a dress whose price was of breasts by the people ing without remembering the viral study beyond my means mostly because I could of female college students’ reaction to an- imagine being touched through the sub- who know them best other young woman—chosen by research- limely silky fabric. (My breasts and I are ers because she was “attractive from an divorced from their previous tender, and 1 evolutionary perspective” (small waist, I’ve only once managed to put the dress to I Look Better Naked big boobs)—depending on what she wore. its proper use. We persevere, however; the Never a sound sleeper and prone to over- When the Darwinian ideal “interrupted” money will not go to waste.) heating, I often wake in the morning to a meeting clad in jeans and a T-shirt, the When I’m walking down the street, find that I’ve stripped myself bare over- coeds took the incident in stride; when she my breasts do not call out to men as night. There’s a full-length mirror across was dressed in a low-cut blouse and short do the appendages of the more gener- from my bed, and on summer days I’ll sit skirt, however, they rolled their eyes and ously endowed, which is not to suggest up, catch my reflection, and pause. In this acted hostile in her presence, with one that I’ve lacked for male attention. I’m a barely conscious state, my gaze is noncrit- speculating after she left that she prob- package deal as far as my appearance— ical, my body sleep-warm, and Renoir’s ably wanted to sleep with her professor. nice hair and face, tall and thin—and Nude in the Sunlight crosses my mind. I’m fortunate enough to work at a job plenty of men have greeted my body If you haven’t guessed, it’s my breasts surrounded by supportive, sex-positive enthusiastically, in and out of bed. That I’m admiring; they’re large and round women I trust and admire. The few times really shouldn’t be a surprise, but in and, rightly or wrongly, capture some I’ve worn a top that clings or dips, I’m met our pornified, surgically enhanced cul- kind of cultural ideal. The adjectives em- with “Keziah!” I know what this means. ture, it can be hard to remember that ployed by the guys who’ve come into con- It’s the you-go-girl, feminist-friendly ver- some men (and women) actually prefer tact with them au naturel are “great” and sion of a catcall. And yet, I’m young, with a streamlined aesthetic, and most of us “amazing,” voiced almost reverently. And worth left to prove, and serious women couldn’t care less about size as long as as though my breasts appreciate the com- do not present their bosoms on a platter. our partners throw themselves into the pliments, they’re highly receptive, like the Is America ready for a president who proceedings. mimosa plants I used to play with on trips shows off what nature gave her? Not yet. As for my own eye, I’ve been im- to Hawaii, their sensitive leaves crinkling Like thigh-highs, ample cleavage feels pressed with my breasts’ loveliness. They at a breath or a touch. lewd in a way private nakedness doesn’t. look fetching in a lacy bra, and some- Now comes the inevitable downside. One morning last year, I woke up times I like to watch them as much as Can a woman be completely sanguine alone in a man’s bed; he’d left hours ear- I like to watch the body of the man I’m about her body? Short answer: No. (I’m lier for a flight. It was the first time I’d with; the male body still can be slightly truth-telling here, not propagandizing.) been in his apartment without him, and I frightening to me (though that adds its The ratio of my rib cage (small) to my lingered, taking a long shower and walk- own frisson). My breasts in the right lin- breasts (large) cuts the kind of figure that ing out of the bathroom naked, and then gerie make me smile—is it pride?—and I find difficult to outfit. In structured or making his bed in the buff. As I reached they turn me on. If that is not effectively formfitting dresses and tops—most work for my clothes I caught sight of myself—he co-opting the male gaze, I don’t know clothes—I resemble Joan in Mad Men or, had a mirror, too, right by his bedroom what is.—Laurie Abraham worse, Joan’s older sister. I don’t like the door. Large breasts may make their bear- overtly sexual (or matronly) look. It could ers into walking Rorschach tests, eliciting just be that my sensibilities were formed others’ desire, anger, jealousy, even (fe- 3 in the company of the lithe wisps of the male) solidarity. But that morning in the The Normcore of Boobs San Francisco Ballet—my mother played mirror, the breasts I saw in the reflection, The following logic might seem perverse flute in the orchestra. But it’s more than the breasts he’d exalted just hours earlier, or nonsensical, in only the way a wom- that. I don’t like how I think others per- belonged only to me. —Keziah Weir an’s thoughts about her own body can ceive me when my curves are showcased: be, but here it goes: While I think my as a sexpot, as more body than brains. To slim legs, blue eyes, and delicate wrists 2 Breasts avoid that, I’ve honed a minimizing pro- are especially fine, the thing I love about fessional uniform, which basically con- What Pleasures They’ve my breasts is that there’s not much to sists of crewneck shirts and loose dresses. Afforded! love about them. Or to hate about them. A love story It’s my own personal game of hide-the- The first word that comes to mind when The normcore of boobs, if you will. (If Or two, or three. A special section on the world’s boob, and I’ve gotten pretty good. At I think of my breasts is…trustworthy. my breasts had their own favorite drink, most discussed, displayed, and desired body part— brunch recently with a girlfriend, the They’re small, 34A, so they stick close I imagine it would be a pumpkin spice unk Archive in sickness, in health, and in the imagination Tr conversation turned to a new medication by. For years I ran up and down basket- latte.) A B cup, give or take, they’re small- 138 Beauty Subslug Beauty Breasts 139 ish in size but not dramatically so. (The even if I did have a very good A), and left one is slightly larger than the right his attention to them was almost always but only inasmuch as the human body the gateway to our sexual encounters. is never perfectly symmetrical—heck, In fact, most of the guys who saw them breast health: their idiosyncrasies aren’t even that idio- over the years approved. They’re tiny by syncratic.) Their pertness, average; their the standards of the billboards in Times shape, more oval than round, I guess? I Square, but they apparently had a cer- myths/truths actually haven’t given my breasts much tain je ne sais quoi. A college boyfriend When to get a breasts usually shrink says Elisa Port, MD, chief thought in the 16 years since I got them. clamped a champagne glass over one mammogram, slightly from their pre- of breast surgery at Mount And I wouldn’t want it any other way. of them while we were in bed (it did fit what not to worry baby size—with sag being Sinai Hospital in New To be clear, this isn’t some effort to perfectly) and said, “That is a f--king about, and why the result. York. “Nothing could be damn with faint praise or to rationalize ideal, Lisa.” I only wish I’d had the pres- Isaac Newton further from the truth.” my situation. When it comes to much of ence of mind to reply, “That is a f--king could’ve consulted Only the fool- my body, I feel overwhelmed, caught in cliché, Roger.” for Victoria’s Secret hardy don’t get Alcohol increases a lifelong struggle to tone things down. My husband was not a man who yearly mammo- the odds of get- For starters, I’m 5'10" in stocking feet— dealt in clichés or hyperbole. For this Without a bra, grams after 40 ting breast cancer which often leaves me the tallest woman and other reasons, I loved him. He you’re doomed depends on whom somewhat in the room and at least once a month once asked me how I rated our sex life. to fall TRU-ISH you ask Drinking more than two inspires a complete stranger to come I gave it a B+, A-, and it delighted him, Changes in skin, con- Because of the small ben- alcoholic beverages (de- up and ask if I played volleyball in high because it was true. nective tissue called efit to screening mammo- fined as a 5-ounce glass of school. (I didn’t.) Though I’ve learned You may have deduced that some- Cooper’s ligaments (akin grams for women in their wine or a 12-ounce bottle to embrace my height over the years, thing went awry in our story, and that to an internal bra), or the forties (2,970 women of beer) a day hikes risk by there are still times when I wish I could would also be true. My husband died of actual soft tissue in the must be screened for one about 20 percent. To put remove five inches and just blend in for lymphoma a year and a half ago. Two breast can cause droop- life to be saved) and the this into perspective, 12.5 a day. Then there’s my hair—so thick years ago, in the middle of his ordeal, ing, says Manhattan potential harms (false- out of 100 women will get and voluminous that if I take a shower my left breast became empathic (or was plastic surgeon Adam positive results that breast cancer sometime and let it air-dry, it will still be damp 12 it competitive?) and developed a cancer Kolker, MD. The support trigger repeated unneces- during their lifetimes hours later. This is all in stark contrast of its own. So in a panic—both a husband of a bra helps somewhat, sary testing, radiation (though only about 3 out to my personality (or perhaps a reaction and a wife with cancer? Both a father but genetics can trump exposure, and overtreat- of 100 women will ever to it?), which is mostly reserved until you and a mother with cancer?—I subjected Playtex. “Is sagging ment for disease that die from it). Increasing get to know me. Ditto my clothes, which my ideal breast to surgery and radia- inevitable?” Kolker says. would never become life- that by 20 percent means are minimalist, quiet, plain. I’m sincere tion without any thought of aesthetics. “It may well be.” threatening), the United 15 out of 100 more-than- when I say I don’t think I could manage Anyway, “radiation makes your breast States Preventive Ser- two-a-day drinkers will to walk down the street if I had a remark- perky,” said one of the perky technicians Exercise is the vices Task Force recom- get the disease. able rack. who beamed 180 cGy of radiation into enemy of perky mends the test for women Which is, in its own twisted way, the my breast every day for six weeks. I just breasts ONLY IN from 50 to 74, and only The larger your ultimate in body acceptance—appreciat- wanted the tumor out. So I did it expe- EXTREME CASES once every two years. breasts, the higher ing things exactly as they are. frustratingly slow to get into the breast- hand—an uncanny miniaturized version diently. Pressing my surgeon and on- “If someone marathon- Other medical groups, your cancer risk —Amanda FitzSimons feeding game, but now they are the of my own—back and forth, back and forth cologist and radiologist and all my other trains with no bra, there however, continue to debatable hardworking MVPs of motherhood. As across my right breast as he eats, and I am -ists about how it would look afterward is a gravitational effect,” advise annual mammo- According to a 2013 study 4 such, they suffer many of its humilia- flooded with gratitude. Not just because seemed…shallow, in the grand scheme. Kolker says. Plus, when grams for all women 40 that followed almost tions. Overtouched, underpampered, this creature, so frighteningly (to me) bird- My husband and I would get through the body mass index of and over. The upshot is 80,000 women for 11 My Breasts Need and ballooned to a cup size I don’t even like at birth, has speedily morphed into a our cancer crap and return happily to hard-core athletes—or that mammograms years, those with a C cup A Tropical Vacation bother to measure, they spend some 23 sturdy cherub whose every gained ounce our B+, A- sex life. He’d love my incised any woman, for that aren’t considered the were four times more “So they’re definitely large,” the lactation hours a day hoisted into the kind of bras gives me a little ripple of pride and relief. breast, precisely because of all that it, matter—drops below 20, preventive miracle they likely to die of breast can- consultant declared. She was jostling my you hope no one else ever has to see, But also because at the end of every day and we, had been through together. the fat in their glands once were, and women cer than those with an A, four-day-old son in one arm while study- apparatuses sized merely “large” and that I spend at work and my son spends But that is not how it went. He’s not dissipates, deflating the are encouraged to talk but other research hasn’t ing my breasts. “But with a smallish “extra large.” Subjected daily to a high- with his nanny—a kind, capable woman here to love my left breast, which has an breast’s “stuffing.” with their doctors turned up a correlation. nipple.” I was sitting on my couch with powered, hospital-grade breast pump, whom we’re lucky to have found and who undeniable two-inch scar puckering one about their own Part of what clouds the is- my husband to my left, my mother to my and, as of a few weeks ago, a pair of is, inevitably, the one present for most of side, even if the MRI technicians admire IF your daughter circumstances. Those sue is the complicated role right, and the consultant front and cen- precocious, razor-sharp little incisors, his waking hours and many of his mile- the surgeon’s work: “So little scar tissue!” screams, “You’re who have a significant obesity plays in breast can- ter. Everybody was inspecting my faulty they are, sadly, strictly off limits to even stones—it is my breasts that give us this Now I wonder, what will happen the ruining my life!” family history of the dis- cer risk: Two studies found equipment—its plump, naked expanse the most tender romantic advance. This sweet, sleepy, peaceful intimacy, this 20 first time I’m in a position to unbutton can you scream ease or have BRCA gene that having larger breasts propped up on a nursing pillow like temporary injunction seems unfair, minutes of absolute connectedness. In my blouse in front of a man? He’ll see back, “You ruined mutations, for example, increases risk in thin a cigarette girl’s wares—to figure out why, even unkind, to my husband, the man this circle that is ours alone, he is mine the scar, the loss of volume where the my boobs!”? YES, IF should almost certainly women, but not in those having lain dormant for 37 years, these who has the temerity to desire them and I am his. —Maggie Bullock surgeon carved out the cancer and then YOU WANT TO ACT follow a more regular who are more heavyset. breasts of mine were struggling to rise (and me) even at my deepest postpar- went back again to carve out some more LIKE A teenager screening schedule. One potential reason for to the challenge of sustaining human life. tum low. But look, I tell him frequently, flesh in the pursuit of “good margins,” “The longer the milk- the link between weight Five months later, my son safely out these breasts of mine deserve a break— 5 and we’ll have to have the talk. Will the producing elements stay Using antiperspi- and disease? Some of of harm’s way, I can see the humor in and maybe a raise, a promotion, and a My Empathic Left Breast guy then write a narrative based on my swollen, the more the rant causes breast the genes that determine the situation: big boobs, small nipples? first-class ticket to a tropical vacation. My husband would be pissed at me for breast that says, “Danger! Compromised skin stretches,” Kolker cancer NO, NO, NO breast size are also associ- Yep, that’s me. These days it seems al- For look at what they can do: At night, writing about my breasts. But he’s not here systems! Abort! Abort!” says. To make matters Antiperspirant does not ated with breast cancer, most disloyal that I ever doubted my in the shadows of my bedroom, my son to keep me from doing it. So here goes. Will I even let myself find out? worse, when women clog the sweat glands and investigators reported in absently skims a dimpled, long-fingered stop breastfeeding, their cause toxins to build up, 2012. —Sunny Choo trusty former Ds—they may have been He loved my breasts (he was a T-man, Toll/Folio-ID isabeth —Lisa Chase El

In a survey on ELLE.com, we asked women around the world how they feel about their breasts. A few responses: “I have pretty breasts”; “Teardrop-shaped”; “My boyfriend has names for them”; 140 beauty Breasts “Soft, huge puppy ears.” For much, much more, go to ELLE.com/breasts. 141 But by the time I met her, in her twen- decade ago, I honestly didn’t notice. I couldn’t help but tell her ties, she seemed to have at least outward- that, though it was the last thing she wanted to hear. “I was still The Trials ly embraced what she’d been given. We going to do it, even if you weren’t going to be attracted to me,” started hanging out as friends; but the tops she says. “I waited two full years after I wanted to do it because she’d wear, with a good three inches of vis- you didn’t want me to. You were the worst part of the whole of an ible décolletage, drove me crazy, resulting thing.” We haggle about desired cup size. I plead for a full D. in involuntary spasms, a yearning to be She settles for a C and tells me I’m an asshole. near her, and a thoroughly enthusiastic yes The morning of the procedure, I drop Katie off at the train unrepentant whenever she suggested late-night danc- that will take her into the city to her doctor, for an outpatient ing, despite the fact that I loathe dancing. procedure that is to begin at 9 a.m. and last three hours. Ka- Whenever she was near, a fantasy would tie tells me that the doctor will call me after she’s moved into breast man unspool: We might be talking about her recovery so I can begin the 90-minute drive to his office to On the occasion of his wife’s reduction, asshole boyfriend or her dog or her job, pick her up. First 1 p.m. rolls by, then 2. I begin to panic. I re- but all the while I’d be thinking, What’s alize I have no idea what her doctor’s name is, where his of- Howard Ray ponders the nature of preventing me from reaching across the ta- fice is. By three o’clock, I’m certain that something terrible love, lust, and the boundless appeal of ble and, with one solitary, naughty finger, has happened to her. Some butcher masquerading as a Park his bride’s lavish bosom pulling her top down? And so exposed, is it Avenue plastic surgeon has obviously lured her to his office, possible that whatever her initial surprise, only to harvest her kidneys and leave her for dead propped “Are you still going to be attracted to me after I do this?” Katie, even horror, at this breach, it might give up on some medical-waste Dumpster. What would I even tell my wife, asks one night, puncturing the postcoital silence with way to something else? Would she be un- the police when I called them? That because I didn’t want my my least favorite question. “This” was the breast reduction able to resist if I just dropped to my knees wife to get a breast reduction, I have been a criminally neglect- I kept hoping she’d forget all about, the way she’d forgotten and began kissing her? ful spouse and didn’t even bother writing down the name of about wanting to relocate our family from Brooklyn to rural Of course, when we finally did get to- the man who was going to put my children’s mother to sleep Costa Rica, or like she’d forgotten about opening a trendy gether, it wasn’t because I’d pulled her and slice her up with a scalpel? At 4:30, as I’m hurtling down housewares outlet called The Jesus Christ Superstore, or like shirt down in public; that probably would the highway toward Manhattan, practicing what I’ll tell the she’d wisely forgotten about naming our son her invented have done me in with her, and possibly the kids about how Mommy ended up in heaven, my cell phone name, Ajoa. But “this,” I discovered unhappily, was a stickier cops. And those revealing tops, she told me finally rings. “Your wife is fine,” the doctor tells me. He’s been aspiration, something that she’d apparently wanted to do since after we were married, weren’t contrived briefed on the insensitive, tit-man husband, apparently. “And she was in college, though I didn’t find out about it until after as a sexual semaphore for me or anyone don’t worry,” he says. “By no one’s definition are her breasts we’d been married. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked the ques- else. They were, she said, simply an at- small now. She’s just got the breasts she was always supposed tion. The moment we decided that two kids were enough and tempt to differentiate her upper half from to have.” To hell with her breasts, I thought. Where’s my wife? she was no longer a one-woman craft-services operation, she her bottom. “I had a great waistline then,” She’d been beaten up pretty bad. The three-hour surgery began semi-regularly raising the topic of a reduction. Katie told me, “so it was appealing to show had taken eight. A nurse deposits her, swollen and moaning, The thing I can’t bring myself to tell Katie is that even be- that off, and to show that I actually had a into the car. “I have no idea what they were doing in there,” fore I’d fallen in love with her—her wicked humor, her decency, shape and wasn’t just some blob.” But still. Katie says. “I imagine you could separate conjoined twins in her strength—I’d fallen in love with her extraordinarily large Oh God, when I finally saw them fully un- that time.” A good month without sex follows. A month after breasts. The breasts had beguiled me, pulled me to her like leashed, beams of heavenly light seemed that, it’s below-the-waist, don’t-touch-the-bandages sex only, the glowing batons of the guys who marshal airplanes around to emanate from them, angels blew trum- which provides a welcome reunion with the most indispens- the tarmac. It was only after I had her—them—that the woman pets, choirs sang. “Don’t move,” I told her able player in the sex situation, a part that has literally lived attached to them truly came into focus. The profane made one of the first times she lay naked in my in the shadow of her breasts and probably hasn’t received the way for the sacred, but they seemed in my mind to be a great apartment. “I just need to remember what adoration it deserved over the years. For an entire year, her team, my wife and her breasts. And after more than a decade you look like in case I never get to see you breasts are hidden from me and, during sex, dwell in darkness together, my love for my wife was inviolable. But was I really like this again.” or shadow, like goblins in some low-budget horror film. “The in any position to predict how my penis would react? My penis As we fell in love and became comfort- scars are worse than I was promised,” she tells me. isn’t reasonable, and it’s not me. How can I speak for it? run, agog. She had no idea how to handle the attention. “I mean, able together, there were stories I would get her to tell me, of One drunken night, they finally come out. “They’re beau- I am well acquainted enough with it to know, however, that what was I supposed to do?” she says. “Own it?” (To this day, her wild twenties in the city, finally liberated and at ease with tiful,” I say, which I mean. The scars, a T-shape under each the slightest contact between any part of my body and Katie’s she never raises her eyes from the ground while she’s walking her body, and seemingly finally at peace with her breasts and breast and leading to the nipple, have faded, and the longest spectacular, pendulous, edible gazongas, even fully clothed, on the street.) Even more disturbing, she’d get similar leers from those who loved them. This one tale she told—about the time ones, running the length of the bottom of the breast, are hid- would precipitate its stirring. I, the evolved husband, would men old enough to be her father. “It was grown-ass men salivat- she had a man kissing each breast, about how much she en- den when her breasts settle on top of them. She’s been running be supportive of whatever Katie needed to do to feel better; ing at me,” she says. “It was intimidating and scary. What 14-, joyed that, or maybe it was more that she enjoyed how much again and can now walk around the house sans bra without my penis, however, might see her plan as nothing less than a 15-year-old girl would be ready for that? Your mother doesn’t the men obviously appreciated them—it’s hard to imagine that shame. Our sex has returned to its pre-reduction level and potentially unforgivable betrayal. “I just don’t know, sweetie,” prepare you for that.” Her costume in Joseph and the Amazing Tech- any man could have gotten off as much as I did hearing the fury, and my penis hasn’t once tried to stage any sort of protest. I finally tell her, which is the absolute most optimistic thing I nicolor Dreamcoat had to be redesigned into something resem- story, over and over, over the years. And I reveled in it because It’s been fine without the same amount of breast play. It’s not can muster without lying. She weeps. “Did you marry me for bling a potato sack for decency’s sake. “Dear God,” the drama not only was I the man who’d ended up with her, I was also the that I don’t love them—if they’re not full Ds, they’re doing a hell my breasts?” she asks. Of course I didn’t. But I did marry her coach gasped when he saw her wearing the original two-piece man who’d ended up with them. of an impression. But when I touch them, I think we’re both with her breasts, and I never imagined that they might at some ensemble with an exposed midriff. A popular upperclassman With kids, her breasts got bigger. Much bigger, she says. taken from the moment and forced to remember the talks, the point decide to go their separate ways. asked her out, got grabby, and reported afterward to anyone at How big, she won’t even tell me. “I would really prefer you not arguments, and that terrible day, as Katie puts it, “when you From their first appearance, seemingly overnight, in eighth school who’d listen that the date had been a bust because Katie even having the image in your mind,” she says. She wanted to dumped me on a train so I could ride off and be cut open.” grade, she resented her breasts, she confides. “I was renowned “wouldn’t let me get my hands on those titties.” Her parents pre- wake up and not have to put on a bra first thing. She wanted to The same day that I finally realized the insignificance of her for them,” she says. “Suddenly, I was the sexy girl.” She remem- tended not to even hear her when she came home and reported, run again. After two C-sections, her waist had never returned breasts in comparison to the life we’ve built together. bers the feeling of horror when, as a high school freshman, while as a sophomore, that she’d been voted Girl I’d Most Want to to how it was, and she felt that her breasts were conspiring to So yes, honey of two years ago, I’ve been to the future, and yes, she was jogging around the intramural fields with the field hock- Be Stuck on a Desert Island With. It was, she now realizes, the turn her into that blob she’d always feared becoming. “They I’ll absolutely be as attracted to you afterward as I was before. ey team, she witnessed the high school’s entire baseball team Great Tits Award. Through no agency of her own, biology had just aren’t sexy anymore to me,” she says. But they were still Let’s never again have another talk like this about your beautiful

stop practicing, drop their balls and bats, and silently watch her chosen her to be a sex object. Huffschmitt/Sipa sexy to me, and if they were different from what they were a breasts, at this or whatever size you decide they should be.

“They’re perfectly perky, like pears. I love the size because I get to wear whatever I want 142 Beauty Breasts and can go without a bra. It’s effortless and fun.”—23-year-old from South Africa 143