MORE on Boobs, Hooters & Knockers

Ole’s been out of town for a few days – he left me alone and headed out for a place called Little Sturgis, Kentucky. I’m not sure I’ve forgiven him yet – well, okay – I guess I have because I had a really good time while he was gone.

Friday night was karaoke night down at the Local Watering Hole. I haven’t been there for a long time, and my friend Carol (from Bob & Carol fame) thought we needed a Girls’ Night Out. So I met Bob & Carol down there along with a number of other local folks and had supper with them. Now the Watering Hole has a cook that makes the best darn barbecued ribs you could ever ask for. They fall off the bones and melt in your mouth.

When we were done eating Bob went home (he never hangs around for karaoke) and Carol and I were flapping our lips – you know how women can get after a cocktail or two. About an hour later a lady and man walked in and proceeded to take a seat at the next table. I recognized the gal instantly as my old high school friend, Vicki, who moved away eons ago and only comes back here on rare occasions.

She had her back to me so I went up behind her and gave her a big hug. She was so shocked she was speechless. We haven’t seen each other for years and years. So she and her hubby moved over to our table and we proceeded to relive old times and talk about all kinds of carryings on (is that a word?) that we did way back when. You see, Vicki and I lived next door to each other from the time we were 5 until we were in junior high. Then my family moved a few blocks away, but we still hung out all the way through high school and got into a bit of trouble here and there. Nothing serious, just shenanigans.

Being I had just written in my blog about getting my first bra, I brought the subject up and we giggled about it. Then she brought up her own first-bra story. And it goes like this:

Vicki’s mom had small breasts and as they walked together through the lingerie department toward the counter in the back, bras of amazingly big sizes (at least to Vicki) were laid out on display tables. At a volume that apparently sounded like a police siren to her mother, Vicki asked, “Do people really come that big?”
When they reached the clerk at the counter, her mother spoke in a volume to match Vicki’s, “Do you have bras for beginners?” Vicki, of course, was mortified.

Back in those days, in the late 1950s, Marilyn Monroe – who was chubby, even fat, by today’s standards – was the feminine ideal all women aspired to. It didn’t take long to become apparent that Vicki’s puny boobs would never match Monroe’s. In fact, she never outgrew a beginner’s bra, which, until she discovered foam inserts, looked wrinkly through the fabric of anything she wore except the heaviest sweaters. Cleavage has never been a part of Vicki’s life.

Early on, then, she determined to ignore her boobs (no point in wasting time being miserable over something that cannot be) and when, in the 1960s, feminists began burning their bras as a symbol of throwing off male cultural oppression, Vicki got rid of those needless harnesses and she has been happily bra-less ever since.

That doesn’t mean she could stop thinking about her bazooms. During the standard recrimination period when her marriage was breaking up, her husband once shouted, “And I never liked women with small breasts, anyway.” It cut her to the core although, in due course, she has recovered.

But involvement with her nearly non-existent breasts didn’t end with her marriage. Every mammogram (agony when there is nothing for that cold, metal, grapefruit squeezer to grasp) showed tiny, white dots on the x-ray that each physician assured her must be biopsied to determine if they were cancer.

Those poor, little boobs have been chopped open six times only to find on every occasion that the spots on the film are unimportant calcium deposits. Vicki can read those pictures now as well as any radiologist and no one has been allowed to cut into her boobs for two or three decades. Nor will they, until she sees something different.

Meanwhile, in the wider world beyond Vicki’s personal boob travails, breasts – mostly naked or barely covered – became a cultural fetish. What would spring break - and even TV, these days - be without wet tee-shirt contests. Wonderbras and their like have created cleavage where none naturally exists (where were these when Vicki still thought she needed them?). Most cable news anchorettes appear to be hired as much for their unmistakably impressive chests as their facial beauty. And there is hardly a woman cop or lawyer in television dramas whose shirt or suit jacket isn’t open nearly to her navel – even in court.

What does all this concentration on big, bazoom-sized breasts mean, Vicki wonders – if anything? Without wanting to give away too much of her personal history, no man has ever fled when he got her clothes off and if any didn’t enjoy themselves, they were, unlike her husband, gentlemanly enough not to mention it. Oh, and not one didn’t come back unless she intended it so.

Which brings her to the present day.

Although Vicki’s lifelong determination to ignore her baby boobs failed, she is nonetheless chagrined to discover in old age, that even her little ones are not immune to gravity. She didn’t expect it, but sag they have.

On the other hand, she and I both believe we (and all other old women) would look silly with perky, upturned tits, so she waits gleefully for that eighth and most satisfying deadly sin, schadenfreude, (pleasure derived from the misfortune of others) to overtake her when one day, a pair of surgically-enhanced, 85-year-old, artificial hooters eternally pointing north, rolls into view.

I can't wait either (chuckle)!!

Love Lena