Dress: Principles via eBay. Belt: H&M, Shoes: thrifted. Necklace: Monsoon
The ladies over at Academichic are currently running Dress Your Best - a series of outfit posts designed to celebrate our bodies by dressing to highlight our best features rather than, as is so often (presumed to be?) the case, to hide what we consider to be our worst. So today, in celebration, welcome to my breasts!
I’ve had a slightly strange relationship with ‘em over the years. When I was a teenager, friends all seemed to be curvier than me and I was chubbier than I’d have liked (while, of course, being smaller than I am now), but I always had slender legs and so with leggings-and-a-huge-jumper being an entirely appropriate uniform for a 90s teenager I more or less forgot there was anything much between neck and thigh.
A little older, into my early twenties, and I learned the Power Of Cleavage and built a fragile self-confidence on the inevitable results of the resulting admiration. But it was a hollow confidence, one that was never really about my body or about my self but more about my worth as judged by others in the sphere of attractiveness. I started to cover up, conscious that I wanted to be taken seriously and didn’t have the genuine appreciation of self that would render compliments anything other than dangerously addictive.
A year or so ago, as part of a confidence-building thoughtshift that may or may not be something to do with being in my early thirties, I began this blog. I started working out more – not to lose weight, but to feel better. I began to love myself and, gradually, to love my body.
But the breasts… healthy appreciation of what nature provided there was one of the last things to come. After weight loss and the realisation that the reason I’d been avoiding button-down shirts all these years was because now it was no longer Baggy 90s Clothes Era I couldn’t actually do them up, I got a proper bra fitting.
And suddenly, I was a 30F.
I no longer have shoulder-grooves because the bands of my bras provide the support they should so the straps aren’t having to work harder than they’re meant to. I’m not spilling out of a D cup and having to constantly rearrange myself. I don’t have to yoink down a band that’s trying to tango up my shoulderblades because it’s four inches too wide for my body. I can run up or down the stairs without having to clutch my hand to my chest like an asthmatic 90 year old. In other words, I am comfortable.
And it’s not just physical comfort. It’s as if now that I’ve finally worked out what they are and how to clothe them for comfort, I feel I can really be happy with my breasts. If I wear a low-cut dress it’s no longer because I want validation because I feel ugly – it’s because I feel pretty and hell, why should I hide that? I don’t feel self-conscious about them the way I used to – I love ‘em the same way I love my legs, my what-colour-are-they-again eyes, the hair I’ve always liked so much I’ve never dyed it, my birthmark or my lips.
They’re fabulous, they’re fun, and they look damn good in a Deco under a neckline like this. Hello boys? Nah. Hello boob-acceptance? Hell yes.
Where would we be without Bravissimo? I swear half the women I know have had a life-changing experience in their fitting rooms. I’m not sure I’ll ever be entirely fond of my breasts, but at least now I have properly fitting and supportive bras I feel as though I’ve mostly made my peace with them.
It’s quite extraordinary the difference a properly-fitted bra makes isn’t it? To both one’s appearance and one’s view of it – they go from a faintly troublesome, always uncomfortable bit of body to, well, *not* being troublesome and uncomfortable!
That dress is fantastic on you, the belted shape is perfect.
The bust area is an interesting one because those two bits that stick out of it have been so… well, politicised. I’ve had it suggested that mine make me a ‘real woman’ (rather sad, I thought the other 5″2 of me was real too), but also had it suggested that they were in some way undermining my feminism (err sorry? They’re fatty tissue and glands, they don’t have political opinions and it’s not their fault if chauvanist builders are fascinated by booby), had comments to the effect that they make me look slutty. And all by women. Many men who don’t want to appear ‘dodgy’ find it hard to admit that boobs are attractive (they are- whatever the shape or size. It’s evolution) or fall too easily into the ‘real woman’ jargon which ironically is sexism repackaged. It’s a minefield and on a delicate day the temptation can be to avoid it with a roll neck (or a fruit of the loom/naf naf sweater if we’re feeling uber 90s again).
So it’s weird- dare I say it, harder than a small waist or long legs to truly be confident with.
I agree – there is so much weight attached to the having, and ‘appropriate’ display, of breasts that it can be hard to see them in quite the same way as one sees legs, which come in for their fair share of sexual appreciation but not in nearly such a bewilderingly contradictory way in societal terms. One’s worth and intelligence don’t seem to be bound up in quite the same way with calf muscles!
I am still more likely to cover my chest up for, say, an important meeting than I would be to make sure I was wearing a skirt to the knee or longer, because I know that even if I see only ‘nice dress that suits me and is appropriate for scorching summer weather’, other people may be drawing entirely different inferences which may be detrimental to me in some way. It’s a bit ridiculous and rather frustrating.
Yes, it’s often struck me that breasts carry way more baggage than any other body part. A busty woman is immediately coded as slutty in the popular imagination – and it starts in school. You have to consciously work around this by dressing extra carefully; besides obvious questions of fit, certain styles, certain looks (that would be totally chic on a different figure) just aren’t an option for a curvy woman who wants to be taken seriously. Gah.
Yes, as if other people’s interest in your bust is somehow indicative of your sexual behaviour – and as if your sexual behaviour is anyone’s business but that of you and anyone you choose to involve directly.
I know quite a number of considerably bustier women who report being on the receiving end of some quite nasty comments when they expose even a hint of cleavage – yet at a certain level of bustiness there’s little short of roll-neck tops that won’t do so. They can’t seem to win.
Right, but even a roll-neck top is “wrong” if at all close-fitting! Beyond a certain size, practically the only things that don’t look “sexy” are totally shapeless. You get to choose between sexy/slutty and frumpy/mumsy. Those are your only options.
I don’t have particularly large breasts – A or B cup, in fact, depending on my monthly weight gain/loss cycle – which I’ve always appreciated, as they are, indeed, easier to dress. Yet I still cannot wear fitted button-down shirts or shirt-dresses without sewing the gap over my bosom, or wrap-dresses without a safety pin, and I am still aware of wearing anything round neck or roll-neck which might make me look “busty”. It’s only in the last year or so (hello 30!) that I’ve begun to see my breats, like the rest of my body, differently: as something to be celebrated rather than hidden or used, and as an assett in creating that desired hourglass shape.
Yet when I look at other women, I tend to associate sluttishness (I’m not going to deny it – sometimes the thought crosses my mind, no matter how much I try to quash it) with expanse of leg more often than breast. I’m more likely to judge someone for wearing a “belt” than for exposing cleavage. I can’t express why, it’s just how I’ve been conditioned…
This dress is fabulous on you and, incidentally, doesn’t look at all sluttish, or even particularly revealing! Red is great with your colouring.
(As an aside, the issues you identify regarding your bra are all rather too familiar to me… Perhaps I should pay a visit to Bravissimo after pay day?)
Thank you, Caroline! There should be more red around, I think
A trip to Bravissimo is always worth it! They have an excellent fit guide on their website, too. Other than that, as a very rough rule of thumb, and if you’re not already of course, try using your actual underbust measurement as your band measurement – rather than faffing about with the traditional add 4″ malarky – and then count up the alphabet from that point until you get to your full bust measurement. It’s no substitute for a proper fitting as all sorts of things affect the fit of a bra, obviously, but it gives a good place to start if you feel your current bras aren’t as well-fitting as they could be.
I think for me short skirts are more an issue of it, erm, being difficult while wearing such a thing to retain dignity at all times. I’m fine with short skirts for not-work situations, and will happily wear a few inches above the knee at work, but there’s short and then there’s short. There are things which I’d prefer were kept for consenting partners!