I knew that my boobs meant trouble from the very beginning. There's even video evidence of the moment I realised it. We were visiting family in Ireland and I was using the video camera I got for my birthday to make a (no doubt fascinating) film of the holiday including (if I remember correctly) a running inventory of what we had in our freezer.
When I pan the camera round to begin a searing interview with my parents, I noticed a strange, questioning look come over my dad’s face. Forgetting for a moment that he was on camera, he turned to my mum and said ‘I think we need to buy Sophie a bra.’ A couple of seconds passed while I grappled with the gravity of what my dad had just said before I dropped the camera, breaking the lens, and burst hysterically into tears. I was ten.
I wasn’t even old enough to watch Trouble TV, but I already had body issues - I hated my tits. Or at least, I was scared of them. And I'm not alone - even Kate Upton, who's enviable figure has been given the Vogue seal of approval this month, is unhappy with the size of her boobs. ‘I wish I had smaller boobs every day of my life as I would love to wear spaghetti tops braless or go for the smallest bikini design. I know I say I wish I had smaller boobs – and that’s true because at least twice a day I wish that,’ Kate, who has 34DD boobs, said last week. She's not alone. In a recent study, a massive 70 per cent of women reported being unsatisfied with some aspect of their boobs. Breast augmentation is still by far the most popular cosmetic procedure in the UK with numbers of young women in their 20s going operating on their breasts increasing year on year. It seems like we’re a nation of women crippled with boob shame.
Body confidence ethusiast and general booby-blogger Georgina Horne from FullerFigureFullerBust.com is disheartened by Kate Upton's admission. 'I think that when any person doesn't feel right in their body it is sad and sometimes concerning,' she tells The Debrief. 'However, when it comes to being busty I feel that a lot of women have a case of 'the grass is greener'. They may feel like they are always overly sexualised or can't wear certain clothes or bras.' Georgina thinks that the way society sees women with big boobs certainly doesn't help. 'Boobs are are seen as being overly sexual and amazing for that, or a cumbersome pain. It is so hard to conceal them and there's a fine line between being branded a "frump" or a "slut" which is incredibly frustrating. People think women are maybe overly proud of their assets, or trying to show them off or bragging when they mention something about them. It's so frustrating - and let's face it, big boobs are hardly considered "high fashion" are they?'
That's the understatement of the century. When Kate Upton first posed for Vogue, the backlash was, at times, vitriolic. One (charming) blogger wrote:
'Huge thighs, NO waist, big fat floppy boobs, terrible body definition – she looks like a squishy brick. Is this what American women are “striving” for now? The lazy, lardy look? Have we really gotten so fat in this country that Kate is the best we can aim for? Sorry, but: eww!'
Nice. And it's not just buxom Kate Upton who's been boob shamed for daring to have breasts AND be in fashion - last year, even Jourdan Dunn tweeted about being dropped from the Dior Couture show for having breasts deemed 'too big'. Which kind of puts the whole thing into perspective, doesn't it?
Even as a ten year old I knew there was something inexplicably dangerous about having breasts. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but I knew instinctively that the moment I got a bra something would change and I wasn’t going to be ‘me’ anymore. You can’t read The Worst Witch wearing a bra. That would be ridiculous. None of my friends – all a good foot shorter than me with cherubic features and blonde hair – had boobs. Would they still want to play Sylvanian Families with me if they knew what I was hiding under my t-shirt? I was still a child in my head, but my body was trying to tell me otherwise.
Try getting ready for your last primary school disco in a church hall when you’ve got the tits of a 30 year-old. It’s a fucking nightmare.
My fears were only compounded by actually going out to buy a bra with my mum. The woman who measured me was terrifying and when she broke the news that I was a 32C she actually laughed a bit. I didn’t know what that meant, but I could tell by the look on my mother’s face that it wasn’t a ‘normal’ size for a ten year old. As I looked longingly at the pretty pink training bras, Miss Bitchy Bra Assistant pulled down huge lacy monstrosities with thick straps and massive underwires that dug into my waist. For years, when some of my friends were wishing desperately for breasts, I was already grappling with the problem of trying to hide my over the shoulder bolder holder underneath my Tammy Girl strappy top. Try getting ready for your last primary school disco in a church hall when you’ve got the tits of a 30 year-old. It’s a nightmare.
But as I got a bit older and other girls started to develop around me, I actually began to like my boobs. In fact, I found them incredibly useful. They made me look a lot older than I was, which meant I could always buy fags and booze without any problems whatsoever. When a lot of my mates were stuck drinking the remnants of their parent’s cognac in the freezing cold in a park, I was off being (what I saw as) terribly sophisticated drinking with my contemporaries (read: other tall people) and adults (ditto: winos) at the local Wetherspoons.
I didn’t really notice how boys reacted to them at the time because I was pretty certain they were after my riveting personality, but in hindsight guys – themselves heady with post-balls dropping hormones – did seem to be kind of fascinated with them. [Read: they wanted to touch them]. Especially since I convinced my mum to buy me a padded push up bra from Marks and Spencer which made my tits reside somewhere up around my eyebrows. As a result of the interest from guys, my boobs were a completely pivotal part of my sexual development in the same way bums probably are for girls with an amazing rump. My boyfriends would never really let me get off without paying them some attention, so as a result I never really could. I still can’t - good sex for me means paying adequate attention to the girls upstairs and if left alone I can almost guarentee that I'm not going to have an orgasm.
But all that started to change by the time I was about 17. By now I was a 28FF (a size which, incidentally, means I can only buy bras at ‘posh’ shops for upwards of £40 a pop) and my boobs were pretty hard to ignore, with or without the push-up bra. They seemed to bother other girls in a way I couldn’t really understand. For a couple of years, I’d been accused by school mates of pushing them out when in actually I was just walking with my back straight, so I compensated by walking with a hunch which would make my back ache. I was once three-way phone called by some girl mates who all accused me of lying about my bra size to attract guys. I felt like I was being punished for my body.
Big tits weren’t very fashionable at the time either. Indie music was massive and we were all supposed to looking waifish like Sienna Miller and Kate Moss. Suddenly if I got my boobs out in any way (which isn’t hard when you’ve got big tits – even a sports vest can look porny) I felt really self-concious – a feeling other girls would heighten by telling me to ‘put my tits away’ in a way that was supposed to be jokey but just felt cruel. I started to wear more ‘demure’ clothes to cover up a bit because it felt easier – but that of course in turn affected my confidence.
The real nail in the coffin for my boobs came when I went to university. I went to uni in Brighton and a lot of my friends were ‘arty’ types studying things like fine art, sculpture or photography. Everyone wanted to look like Margot Tenenbaum or Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction – neither of whom have big tits. Any kind of ‘obvious’ sexuality wasn’t appealing or cool to us at the time (despite all the the rampant boning that was going on), which is problematic when the body you were born with means you lead with breasts. Smart and cool girls had little ones, porn stars and ‘motherly’ types had big ones. I knew which side of the fence I wanted to be one. And which I was.
A friend once suggested I went braless to make them ‘less obvious’ and ‘more sexy’, which just meant I came back with painful nipples and a rash from sweaty ‘underboob’. Then a guy I was completely besotted with told me he was ‘disappointed’ by how ‘slutty’ I looked when I wore a (very trendy at the time) basque. I was heartbroken – especially as I wore the thing to try and impress him in the first place. He was being a cunt but the damage was done – I was completely over my tits. From that moment on, my uni life revolved around trying to hide by boobies under baggy t-shirts as they merrily wobbled away - nearly every photo taken of me at the time resembles this one – and trying to convince guys not to pay them too much attention in bed. For about a year, I would keep my bra on in bed because I’d become so ashamed of them. Less than ideal really.
It wasn’t until I moved back up to London that things started to change. By now me and my mates were nearing our mid 20s and we were all generally more body positive, so my girl mates actively encouraged me to enhance my boobs rather than hide them. I also stopped craving ‘fitting in’ as much as I had when I was young, and started to appreciate the fact that my big tits made me a bit different to everyone else. I hate to admit that my self-esteem has anything to do with anything as fickle as a trend, but curves were also being made fashionable again by people like Kim Kardashian and Scarlett Johansson which no doubt helped me accept my boobs again (since they’re not going anywhere any time soon). The bra came off in bed and my cleavage made the occasional (though still very rare) appearance in the evenings.
The real ‘pulling off the band aid’ moment came when one of my best friends, who runs lingerie label Almeida asked me to model one of her bras for her in a shoot. It was a quarter cup number so my boobs were essentially just out for the whole world to see (minus some artfully placed heart shaped nipple pasties) and when she put the pictures on Facebook and Instagram the world didn’t collapse in on itself like I thought it might – in fact the whole thing was pretty fun. Plus it was a relief to know that it’s not just teenage boys who were enthusiastic about bosoms, adult men are relatively keen on them as well. I'm not there yet - I still never really wear anything that low cut because I don't like the attention I get and I still untag most Facebook pictures where I look too 'booby', but I'm making progress. Despite what I’d been lead to believe by a nearly decade of boob shaming, I'm beginning to realise that my breasts aren't actually something I need to about that much. They’re just tits.
Follow Sophie to Twitter @sophiecullinane
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.