Caution: Breasts in Training by Bev Hamel
My new hero is Dr Susan Love who informs women that, “Breasts were fine before the invention of the brassiere . . . wearing a bra . . . has no medical necessity whatsoever.”
Even though I am more comfortable not wearing a bra, I do so to defy gravity. The more the female anatomy ages, the more we require training for our breasts. Bras are imbedded in our culture and we learn about their necessity from an early age. I for one have mixed emotions about my first official bra, not the one that my mother eventually bought me, the one that my best friend Annabelle gave me.
I grew up, reached puberty, and lived in an ancient Victorian monster that stood on the corner of Turner and Bay Streets in Clearwater, Florida. On lazy summer afternoons my friend Annabelle and I would walk down the hill to the end of Bay Street where we fished off the small covered dock and caught slimy catfish along with other bottom feeders that swam in and out of the bay from the Gulf of Mexico.
Annabelle wore her long curly red hair in a ponytail, spoke with a New England accent, and was the first girl in our fifth grade class to wear a bra. She was a tall girl for her age and a few months older then I. She could out-run, out-kick, and out-jump all the boys in the neighborhood. I followed her around like a small lost puppy. At times she treated me like her best friend and at other times she totally ignored me. I admired her, loathed her, and loved her all at the same time. She had breasts and I didn’t.
When we weren’t fishing, we often met at the playground by South Ward Elementary School to play kickball or climb the orange trees in the small grove between her house and mine to grab fresh fruit. Later, we would go for a swim in her pool.
On one particular day, Annabelle told me, “You’re flat chested.”
“Yes, I know.” This was quite obvious.
“I know how you can get boobs.”
“How?” I was very interested.
We went to her bedroom and she walked over to her dresser, pulled out a white object that seemed similar in appearance to my brother’s jock strap, only there were two cups instead of one.
“Here.” She handed me one of her old Playtex bras — one with the funny pointy cups.
I tried it on but something was missing. “It doesn’t look right.”
“No problem,” Annabelle said, went into her bathroom, came out and handed me a roll of toilet paper. “Try this.”
“How?”
“Crumble some up and shove the tissue in.”
I used a lot. Suddenly I had a bosom.
“Don’t let your mother know.” Annabelle was somber.
“Why?”
“It’s our secret.”
“Okay.”
My mother, however, noticed, did not say a word and several days later I found two new bras lying on my bed. The package said Her First Training Bra. They fit me, but I still liked Annabelle’s bra better because it was bigger.
I wore the bra all through 6th grade, even slept with it on until the worse thing that could ever happen, happened. Annabelle and I went to a dance at the Y.
We were dressing for the dance. “You need these,” Annabelle said and handed me two squishy conical objects. “They’re called falsies.”
“What do I do with them?”
“Put them in your bra.” I did, but the problem was that she never told me not to use toilet paper too, or told me how to put the foam pads in.
We went to the dance. Annabelle and I were popular that night and had a never ending retinue of dancing partners. My chest for once, equaled hers in size. I twisted, watusied, and stomped until somehow, not one, but both foam pads simultaneously became dislodged from my still too big bra and found their way onto the dance floor. Annabelle, who was right next to me, stopped dancing and started hysterically laughing while pointing at those things lying like upside down ice cream cones on the floor.
Other kids formed a circle and the harder they laughed; I began to cry. Luckily, as I ran all the way home and wished that I could just crawl in a hole and die, I had toilet paper handy to dry my eyes.
The first thing I did when I got home was take off that bra and bury it in the trash barrel. I never wanted to see Annabelle again and even though she tried to see me, my mother told her I was always somewhere else. I wished we could move and when my dad took a new job, my wish came true. We moved to Dunedin at the end of the summer.
As the moving van drove off I could see from the window a tall figure with flaming red curly hair flying in the soft summer breeze waving goodbye. To this day when I taste salty air and smell the heady scent of over-ripe oranges, I think of red hair and small foam rubber pads and begin to laugh. I am thankful that these pads have become built in conveniences for a contraption that continues to keep me in training while it defies the forces of gravity. Only now we call them wonder bras — how uplifting can being in training be?
Bev Hamel is a recovered corporate executive and now owns and operates an antique shop in the tiny Historic and National Landmark town of Bethania, North Carolina. She lives above the shop with her husband, two girls, three cats, a Scottish Terrier, and Yorkie Puppy in training. The shop is actually a front for her writing and teaching endeavors. She is a freelance writer and has published short stories, creative nonfiction, essays, poetry, local newspaper articles and was editor for an area women’s magazine. Bev has just completed her MFA at Goddard College and her first fiction novel Daughter of the Seven Fires and is busily working on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
