breasts

At the beginning of NaBloPoMo, I got myself registered with their site, and my stats went up quite a bit, from around 60 or 70 unique visitors a day to around 100 unique visitors a day. After a couple weeks, I guess the shine wore off NaBloPoMo, and the numbers went down some, hovering around the mid-70s pretty reliably.

Except for Saturday. Saturday is the day when the fewest people read blogs.

Just recently, they've shot back up again. Coincidentally, this happened the same day that google crawled my site, which they have not done in a while. At least not since I posted pictures of my tits.

If you want your stats to rise, I highly suggest posting a picture called "braless."

It's what people, people from all over the world, are searching for. Or it's the photo title that most closely matches what people are looking for. It's the one they find most often, at any rate.

I tried doing a google image search, and I can tell you that my boobs do not appear in the top 10, though Barbra Streisand's mashed beauties did. I got bored before I found myself. But then, all I have to do is look down, so there's not much incentive.

Eric and I went out for a drink last Wednesday after the art show, and I was telling him about this new, um, rise in interest.

"Does it feel weird?" he asked.

"Nah," I said. "Well, maybe a little. I mean if you're going to put your tits on the internet, you can't get your knickers in a twist about people looking at them."

"No."

"But I never imagined that people would really *want* to look at them. I mean, people are probably jerking off over those photos."

"Yes." He laughed.

"But it's just me in a tshirt. It's no big deal. So it seems strange."

I feel dissociated from the images themselves. They're me, of course, but it was really me using my body to prove a point, so that's the context in which I think of them. But I have to admit, the thought of random people out there maybe getting turned on by them kinds of rebounds and turns me on, and then I feel odd about both those facts at the same time. I mean, who doesn't like feeling desirable? But there's something a little shame-faced, a little embarrassed, about admitting it.

It's an odd shift from putting my sex writing out there. That stuff, I put that out on purpose, and turning people on is one of the main thrusts of writing it. The boob pictures, though I wasn't so naive to think that people wouldn't like looking at them, weren't there for that.

I think it's that I feel I have less control over the photos. And while they're a part of me, they're not me in the same way that my writing is.

I'm not sure why I feel like my writing is more me than a part of my body, but there you go.

Of course, if you're going to use your body to prove a point, you know that Annie Sprinkle did it two decades ago and smarter than you.
Anatomy of a Pinup

Though you might also be surprised when you remember that Jamie Lee Curtis also beat you to the punch. 3 hours, 13 people.
Jamie Lee Curtis Has Nothing to Hide

Lastly, since you don't know photoshop, you could never work magic like Glen Feron.
The Art of Retouching

It has been suggested to me that while it is all well and good to describe what one's breasts look like in different kinds of bras, it is really rather more edifying to show what one's breasts look like in different kinds of bras. So I imposed upon poor long-suffering Eric and he took a few photos of my breasts in various degrees of harness. Who needs surgery when one has underwire and boning at one's disposal?

So when next you see a woman walking down the street and think, "Wow, what lovely breasts," because I'm sure that's how you're phrasing it in your very polite minds, keep the photo montage below in mind. Perhaps you should rephrase your thought, and think instead, "What a well constructed undergarment."

If you view a Hollywood movie from the 1970s, you'll see the first picture. If you take in a Hollywood movie from the 1950s, you'll see the last picture. From the last 5 years? The 4th picture. Even if the woman in question is naked. That is what tape is for.

I'm sure one of you out there must have some theory or other about bra shape and the economy. It's not just hemlines, after all.

Edited August 13.

I'm not sure I understand why I was so mad that my boobs got bigger, but that doesn't change the fact of the matter. I was.

The last time I bought new bras, an activity which I genuinely loathe, was over a year ago, as part of the post breakup Foxification Project. Mine were all either worn out or not sexy. I wanted bras that people would be excited to see. I wanted bras that weren't sports bras. I was on the hunt. The only ones I could find that didn't make me despair of ever getting laid again were those shiny, foamy ones from La Senza.

I was appalled. I find the fake boobness of them on the rack alarming, and as I was gingerly picking them off the rack, I knew that these things were why it looked like every woman in Ottawa had had a tit job by the same plastic surgeon. These bras hoik your boobs up high and make them very rounded. They're very structured bras, which creates a boob norm and erases any difference in breast shape from woman to woman. This made me sad, since I'm a breast gal who finds all different kind of breasts sexy. Pointy, rounded, big, small, high, low. Yes, please. And thank you.

Did I want to be part of the problem?

That gave me pause, but then desperation set in. I'd been to three or four stores. I'd had a meltdown in the Jacob changeroom. These La Senza bras were comfortable and they gave me nice cleavage. My t-shirts didn't stick to them. They didn't give me weird armpit booblets. But they made my breasts look really different from any of my pre-foamy bras.

My breasts went from being ski-jumpy 70s boobs, with which I'd been perfectly happy, to fitting in with the current Rounded High Shelf craze. Depending on the day, though, since I still hadn't given up my pre-foamy bras and still went braless pretty regularly. The wild swings weren't helped by the fact that I'd done some reading up on bra sizing and realized that I'd been wearing the wrong size bra for oh, my entire post-pubescent life. I went from a 36B Ski Jump to a 34C Rounded High Shelf, which, from what I read, is pretty typical change in size. C sounds bigger, but really isn't, since a 34C is about the same breast volume as a 36B. Just arranged differently.

Very differently. For a while, every time I looked down I was surprised at how close my boobs were to my face. Hellllooooo cleavage.

My friends and acquaintances found it surprising too. Every time I wore one of the new bras, I would notice people I knew staring at my tits with their eyebrows all quizzled up. I worried they thought I'd had the same work done as all the other girly girls in Ottawa and often wanted to lean over and whisper, "It's just the bra." Shelley would catch herself staring, then shake her head and say, "That's all bra? Crazy." Gradually, my Ski Jumps wore out and I was left with the Rounded High Shelfs. My tits started looking more consistent and people got used to it.

I have never really gotten used to my body. Every time I think I do - and I sometimes manage to go a year or where I don't have to think about what size I am, I just know this is my pants' size, this is the kind of skirt that suits my size and shape - something happens. Last year, the break up happened. First there was the pre-break-up getting in shape, with running and yoga, both of which changed the shape of my body. Then, even though I was brutally sad about the break up, I was also thoroughly relieved. I started eating more. My cells stopped being bathed in the hormones of anxious and sad and I started absorbing more nutrients. It all took a while to kick in. By January last year, I'd gained about 10 pounds of happy fat.

Not a noticeable difference for most people, but a big difference for me. I had gotten used to being skinny. I didn't love it, necessarily, but I'd been a couple years at that weight and had relaxed a bit into my skin. You know, buying clothes and not worrying that they might not fit in 6 months; being able to pick a pair of pants off the rack and correctly judge whether they'd go over my thighs; buying new bras that actually fit my breasts. Stuff like that. The ten pounds was enough to shake all that and put me back in a place where from the inside, I couldn't judge the size of my outside.

There was a taste of this in Halifax. I did a bit of thrifting, first at the Dartmouth Value Village and then the row of secondhand stores on Queen Street. Altogether, I tried on about a dozen pieces of clothing. I bought one skirt and one dress. They were the only two things that fit. Everything else either fell off or didn't get on in the first place. I just kind of thought sheesh, it's crazy how that happens to people.

Then Shelley and I were walking down the street talking about organizing her room and she mentioned some clothes she hadn't worn in a while. "And who knows if they'll even fit," I said. She looked at me, surprised. "Why wouldn't they fit?" she asked.

I was shocked on a basic level. The level where I consider myself the norm. I mean, when I think about it, of course I know that not everyone's body works like mine. I've even heard Shelley comment on the fact that she's been a stable weight for years and years. But that knowledge hadn't sunk in on a practical level, hadn't filtred out into a recognition of the impact those differences might have on mundane habits. Like saving old pants for three years because maybe you might gain weight again but probably not but just in case, and then chucking them two months before you gain 10 pounds and could wear them again.

The Foxification Bras have needed replacing for a while now. The elastic was kinda stretched out. The foam was getting a little dented, and lord knows you don't want denty foam in a Rounded High Shelf. Along with most of my clothes, they had gotten too small . In a fit of remarkable cognitive dissonance, I managed to both recognize and not realize this last fact.

Which is how I happened to be wearing a 34C in the changeroom at La Senza, fiercely whispering to the salesgirl through a crack in the door "This doesn't fit right, does it? Did you guys change your sizing? Because I'm not a D." I couldn't be a 34D. I know my body, right, so I can tell you that I have medium-sized breasts, because I have always had medium-sized breasts, which means that they are are not small, and are not big, and so very definitely not a D because a D is big. No matter what the size around your ribs is. No matter that I've been looking at my boobs spilling out of the Foxification C-cups and thinking "Hmm. Is this bra perhaps too small?" No matter. I am not a D. Not. Possible.

Except then
the salesgirl said "No, I don't think we've changed our sizes." I pursed my lips. Bullshit, I thought. Bull. Shit. Stores are always changing their sizes and what the fuck. Stupid. It's just stupid, because obviously I know my own body. Christ almighty. Fucking La Senza. But I wasn't going to pay $70 for bras that didn't fit. So I bought the Ds and cranked out of the store and back to work.

Except later
Shelley said, "Actually, I've noticed your boobs have gotten bigger. You're definitely at least a C." And I thought, What? Well fuck. Because Shelley always picks the right size for me when we shop together. Her, her I trust.

I was disappointed. I wanted it to be Them. I wanted it to be the fault of the stupid clothing industry and their stupid random sizing designed to trick people into feeling more like buying their stupid clothes.

I didn't want it to be the disjuncture between my brain and my messy, uncontrollable body. But that doesn't change the fact of the matter. It was. And that pisses me off.

It is hard to fucking believe, but the tattoo is done.* It's beautiful. It hurt. A lot. But I was kind of sad to say a last goodbye to my tattoo guy, and mentioned that I was already thinking of my next one. Maybe in the summer.

"After you've forgotten about the pain," he said.

Really, it takes about two weeks for me to forget about the pain.

It was kind of odd this time because I was alone with my tattoo guy. Normally the other tattoo guy is there as well along with another client. This time, it was just me and J. and my escaping mammaries.

I think this is the next thing the Misses Manners and Etiquette need to tackle. What's the appropriate response when you look down and instead of seeing your shirt, see a nipple?

The first option is to cover it up again, but that just seems weird, because you know he's seen it, not staring at it, no, but hopefully paying very close attention to the skin he's jabbing needles into about 3 inches underneath the offending appendage. I felt like covering it up would be kind of like admitting one of us had done something wrong. What that something would be, I have no idea.

The second option would be to just give up and let the nipple run free. But (and this is going to sound weird to anyone who reads this blog regularly) I'm kind of shy. Seriously. I talk a good game, and can occasionally get my gumption up to do something revealing in public, but generally, what you get here or up on stage is much more revealing that what you'll get out of me in person.

I couldn't decide which was the best course of action, so I swung back and forth. Sometimes I yoinked my shirt down, sometimes I pretended I didn't have nipples.

My tattoo guy, who is a brilliant tattoo guy, and very nice, was entirely stoic and did a very good job of not noticing whether they were out or in. Bless his heart.

* It might be longer till the pictures come, because some of the colouring he did is really light. And really light blocks of colour look like angry angry bruises for about the first 5 days. And then they look like flaky snakeskin. Hot.