Monday, March 29, 2010

butches and boobs; flatties and femmes

butches and boobs
flatties and femmes

i walked towards the end of the hall, unsure of what i might find. she had kept herself sequestered up in that room for what seemed like hours. cautiously, i opened the door just a crack and peeked in. i then delicately tiptoed over the well worn ace bandages, paying close attention to the strips of duct tape littered across the floor that were itching to bond themselves to the bottoms of my socked feet.

there she was, sitting cross legged. staring blankly at herself in the mirror with her hands clenching her breasts. "i hate them...what purpose do they serve aside from being the begin of my existence?" she had been trying f
or hours to turn her D-cups into flat, firm, pecs and the process wasn't going as sleekly as she had hoped.

"they are so big and cumbersome. i'm sick of people seeing these on my chest and feeling as if that gives them license to treat me as less than a person. i want a blank canvas, i want to not be identified by my appearance but with these two mountains in the way- it's proving to be a quite challenging."


large breasts are literal mountains for some women. in addition to being painful to carry around, many women have said tig ol' bitties are demonstrative to their appearance- and distracts people from other, more substantial features. top heavy women have cried for years, "they are just plain annoying!"

now before you think i'm encouraging you to raise up your sharpest cheese graters in a rack rebellion, i implore you to flip to the other side of the coin, my side to be exact.
my girlfriend was blessed when the mammary fairy sat down on her chest and unleashed a perfect pile of titastic goodness. i, however, have a different cross to bear.

math, first day of middle school...intensely chewing on my pen cap, hyper anxious and active 7th grade me was alarmed when tapped on the shoulder by a classmate. "hey bp, can i borrow your TI-83?" he asked with a coy smile. never one to turn down a new friend, i disregarded the fact that none of names, first- middle- or last- contained a 'b' or 'p', and i passed him my calculator. as the year pressed on more and more boys from my classes began to snicker when they would call out to me, "BP! BP! BP! haha- hey ashley." even as a young kid i was ok laughing at myself, but i was totally out of the loop on this one. what was funny about a few letters?

as summer began to extend our days, yearbooks were passed out and i gave it to my friends to sign. a few of the boys who regularly called me 'bp' referenced me as such in my yearbook, but one was so bold as to write simply, 'baby bottle pop'.

"what the heck does that mean, bozo?" i asked tentatively (prior to finding out how fabulous curse words can feel when tumbling out of your mouth when mad/offended/incensed). "your boobs. they look like the tops of babybottle pops." my jaw unhinged and dropped to the floor. "oh com'on ashley don't act like you don't know...even MY boobs are bigger than yours, and i'm a dude." i was devastated- not because they had been making fun of me for the latter part of the year to my face without my knowledge. not because they were talking about my breasts whilst sitting behind me in math, day in and day out. but because i had been the last to hear the punchline. in middle school, as you will remember, it's all about fitting in and being the last to 'get' a joke was more painful than being the butt of it.

fact: the lumps of fat that sit atop my ribcage are humble in size- this isn't something new or shocking to me. making fun of me for it in attempts to hurt me is futile, i've owned and accepted my tiny titty fate from an early age. plus, lets see a chick with natural D-cups run sans a bra- her shit will be so far up her throat after the first stride...while us little lumpers can do handstands without a bra and no one's the wiser.

when i crossed the threshold of high school and saw the myriad of perky, bouncy full breasts around me, i knew i was put on this earth to stare at them. it's almost a blessing that i have not been graced (or afflicted, depending on your stance) with actual boobs...could you even imagine?! i would never leave the house!

living with all women, it isn't uncommon for breasts to come up casually in conversation. my girlfriend and both of my roommates have substantial sized twins living beneath their shoulders, i'm the only one in the house with lil' ladies chillin' on my chest. one of my roommates is even considering breast reduction surgery to lighten her load. when she mentioned that to me, it begat the following line of thinking-

the rolling stones taught us that you can't always get what you want, but why is it that butch chicks always seem to have glorious, full, fun bags that they try desperately to hide, or suppress- and then theses flat little femmes are shoving handfuls of synthetic gel pads into our shirts in attempts to appear more ample?

it would be too easy to turn this post into a self-loving, boob-fest, full of verbiage such as, 'love yourself', and 'every body is a beautiful body'. instead i choose to prance down a different path. i say to my lady friends- bind away butches! pout proudly, my femmes! am i supporting self loathing? of course not, but if you are unhappy with your breast size and sleep with women, i have a little secret to share with you...what you lack, they could posses. if you want bigger boobs in your life...you can go out there and find them! you would be shocked at how many people are down to share 'em- big or small.

it's a funny twist of fate these butches with boobs, and femmes who are flat...but the world wouldn't be nearly as dynamic, inspiring, and enlightening if we all were born into our 'ideal form' and as the dalai lama once said, "remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."

6 comments:

  1. Wonderful!! I loved this! Ashley, you make me laugh! I'm certainly with you in the flat femme brigade. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are so right! It always seems to be that it's the the butches that are busty and wishing they weren't. I really enjoyed this post :]

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maybe the flat-chested femme/busty butch dichotomy is not so much a funny twist of fate as it is a reflection of an attempt by the curve-less female to compensate for the lack of a 'feminine' body, whereas a female who already has a curvy 'feminine' body does not feel as much pressure to dress in a way that makes her feel/appear more 'feminine'. Just something that occurred to me when reading this :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love this one! Oh what I'm saying, I love all of your blogs =)

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  6. as a butch with DDs on a tiny frame, i felt almost like i'd be betraying my girlfriend by thinking about a breast reduction. she knows how much i hate them, and always makes a point to tell me how perfect my body is, which of course makes me feel even worse. and it's definitely interesting, or cruel, that there are so many flat chested femmes and curvy butches. the hope that maybe there's something good in it, that having to live with a body that feels so wrong could make you a stronger person, is pretty much the only consolation i can get.

    ReplyDelete