Sometimes it feels like everyone has a “first bra” story. For what’s supposed to be a milestone, there really isn’t a uniform response to the experience. In this week’s But Make It Fashion roundtable, we asked our team: How did you come to own your first bra, and what was it like to get it? How’d you feel about it? What did it mean to you?
Erin Sullivan, Writer
Look, let me just start by saying that going to an Irish Catholic grade school where the phrase “Erin Go Bragh” was on the table WASN’T IDEAL. Just roasted in so many unique ways on a regular basis. I’m not sure if it was a blessing or a curse that I was a late bloomer either!
But my first bra was a sports bra surely made from the thinest piece of material possible, as it was holding up nothing. The first time I got my period my mom just handed me a box of tampons and said there were “instructions inside” with zero mention of it again for the rest of my or her life, so I’m sure the reason I don’t remember asking for/receiving a bra is because I blocked out the trauma of engaging in another conversation about my body.
Heather Hogan, Managing Editor
I got my first bra at Belk (which is the South’s version of Macy’s) when I was 11 years old. It was by a brand named Bugaboo and it looked like a sports bra and I was livid the entire time we were shopping for it. I had to have a bra because all the other girls were wearing bras and I was starting to get boobs, too.
I loved being a girl and I also loved other girls and I had been fascinated with women’s bodies since I first saw Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. What upset me so much was the way my mother and the other women at church talked about “womanhood” and “blossoming” like they were some kind of sacred secrets – except that they also told all of mine and my friends’ business to each other and everyone else. Like when we started shaving, when we got our periods, etc. There was no privacy at all in the process of hitting puberty and sure enough, as soon as I got home with my two Bugaboo bras, my grandmother was calling to say, “Did you go shopping today? What’d you geeeeet?” Blah! It still grosses me out! No one talked to me about what it actually meant to get boobs and a bra. My main worry was that I wasn’t going to be able to play sports anymore, or that boys were going to stop playing with me and want to start kissing me. Getting a bra felt like the end of something I cherished, but couldn’t name. (I did like those bras, though. They were really soft and a very lovely shade of Heather blue.)
A.E. Osworth, Contributing Writer
I don’t remember my first bra because I blocked it out. Even just writing that one sentence, it became magically imperative for me to go check Twitter and my email and, like, get up and walk around my living room because my brain didn’t want to reach out and touch the hot stove that is this memory. I remember the suddenness of it — like one night I had a normal kid chest when I looked down at myself in the bath and the next night I had HUGE TITS. It was a sudden change and I didn’t care for it one bit, but at the same time, I wanted to. Most of my friends who were girls at the time remain girls now, and they were pumped about it or at least indifferent. I don’t remember anyone lamenting the need for a bra, really. So I tried to be just as excited, or at least just as indifferent. I have always wanted to be an adult, so I latched onto it as a sign of being a grown-up. In that way, I could be excited or at least perform excitement, and I could put off the reckoning of hating my chest until finally, at twenty-nine years old, I couldn’t anymore. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d just let myself hate bras. Maybe I would have been able to put my finger on a trans masculine identity much quicker. But, I suppose, everyone arrives where they need to be exactly when they need to be there.
Stef Schwartz, Vapid Fluff Editor
I come from a long line of Jewish women with huge racks; it’s just a tradition in my family apparently. When I was ten, my mom took me out for a whole girls’ afternoon. We went to see My Girl 2 and then she surprised me by taking me to the mall for my first training bra. I was already a poorly dressed, spacy nerd with very few friends. The other girls in my class picked up that I was wearing a bra RIGHT AWAY and teased me for it mercilessly. My entire middle school experience was spent hunching over in the back of classrooms or hiding while changing for gym because other girls accused me of stuffing my bra or otherwise picked on me for developing early (YES PLEASE PAY *MORE* ATTENTION TO MY AWKWARD ADOLESCENT BODY!!!), and as a result I grew up with prrretty intense body dysmorphia. As an adult, I continue to find this aspect of my body mostly inconvenient.
Rachel Kincaid, Managing Editor
I remember it being white, cotton and lightly padded; no underwire, just ungainly triangles. I hated it so much! I was violently opposed to everything related to puberty — menstruating, bras, the whole thing — and I was so mad the first time my mom told me I had to put on a bra before we left the house for where we were going. I was, I think, about ten. I resented wearing something uncomfortable and restricting that no one else could even see (I still don’t wear underwire bras for the same reason), and I think was resentful because I was aware that I had to do this in part to cater to men (or boys, really, at the time) (but also men!! gross!), or to obey norms of dress formed around their perceptions. It would be uncouth and mean unwanted attention if I was visibly not wearing a bra, so I had to put it on, just to accommodate the reality that men would look at me. I hated it! Still do! I just wanted to not have to think about my body and wear whatever was comfortable, and thanks to bras I could do neither.
Alexis Smithers, Writer
I can’t remember my absolute first bra because I’ve never had bigger breasts like the rest of my family. Well, or so I thought until recently. For most of my life I believed I was an A-cup and that meant I never needed to wear bras. Then I got measured at Victoria’s Secret and they were like, “you know you’re a D-cup right?” If that isn’t a succinct explanation of my gender/body dysphoria I don’t know what is.
Anyway, I think my first bra probably came from my grandmother because I wasn’t wearing one and she and my grandfather took us to school. My parents went to work very early and were just probably thankful we got out of the house in time, but my grandma was like, “You can’t go out of the house looking any kind of way.” Wait, no, on second thought, my mom was definitely part of the story at some point. Maybe it was on a Saturday at my grandma’s house and my mom closed the bedroom door with her and my grandma in it. Then they had me try on bras because I couldn’t just keep walking around without them. That sounds more like them, to be honest.
Siobhan Ball, Contributing Writer
Unfortunately I hit puberty running and needed a bra by the time I was eight. Not a training bra confidence booster, but a full on B-cup. I’d also recently changed schools and my classmates were… not kind about the fact that I had what were, for an eight-year-old, giant tits. In an attempt to make me feel better about this, my mother and grandmother took me to Marks and Spencers for a proper bra fitting. But since I loathed clothes shopping, it just felt like further insult. My early bras were soft white cotton, pretty much what you’d expect for a small child. I mostly found them an annoyance, but it was more annoying to go without.
Archie Bongiovanni, Cartoonist
I was forced into it by my mother who was like, “you need a training bra” and I was like “NO, I DON’T.” I am full stubborn taurus and hate change and that included my “changing body.” I can’t really remember most of what went down (dissociate much?) other than we definitely went to Sears. My mom had me try on multiple bras with a poor sales associate who had to deal with a very frustrated and cranky mother and a flat-chested kid who had broken out in stress-hives.
I was a bobble-head of a child. I was stubborn, but ultimately I’d just float along with whatever was handed to me. I got some pale purple and pink training bras and got yelled at every time I didn’t wear them. I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like if there was some sort of bra-alternative that had been given to me at the time. Like, why didn’t my mom offer a sports bra as an option to me? And why was I so clueless I couldn’t figure that out myself? There was no internet, so I didn’t even know binders existed. I can’t actually think too hard back to myself at that time because I was just so uncomfortable. I just remember it all fuzzy and itchy. Thinking about little me in a pink training bra makes me feel just as angry and frustrated and stuck today as I did back then.
Riese Bernard, Editor-in-Chief
One time, in middle school, we were playing outside and it was raining. I was wearing a white shirt with a little landscape on it — a gift from my Dad, from when he was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro — and the rain made my shirt wet and therefore see-through. I got teased ’cause I didn’t have a bra on. The reason I didn’t have a bra on was because I did not have boobs. I still only barely do! But, then as now, it is considered important to neutralize your nipples regardless of how much flesh does or does not surround them.
I don’t remember what my first bra looked like in detail, but I imagine it was like a sports-bra-style bralette, probably white, probably from JC Penny. As soon as I got used to the idea in general, I started wearing Joe Boxer bralettes with matching underpants, which they sold at our local K-Mart. Then, my junior year of high school, my gay best friend told me I should wear grown-up bras (you know, the kind with cups) instead of neon orange/green Joe Boxer bras that matched my neon orange/green Joe Boxer underpants! So I got some Calvin Klein bras at Hudson’s. At that point I was a legit A-cup, but it wasn’t until I went on the pill and became a B-cup that the CK bras I’d bought the year before actually fit. Now I’m back on the AA tip, so you know, life is really a journey.
KaeLyn Rich, Writer
My first bra was a classic white training bra. Training for what, you ask? For WOMANHOOD and all its slut-shaming glory. It was the summer between 4th and 5th grade and we were at a department store at the mall. I don’t remember which store, but it was like Macy’s or Sears or JC Penney or something like that. My mom just randomly asked if I wanted to look at training bras. Honestly, I was thrilled (and a little embarrassed because MOM!). I don’t know if I had anything even resembling breasts, but I knew that wearing a bra was a status symbol among the girls in my grade.
That white cotton training bra with a front closure meant I was on my way to being someone that could maybe be like-liked one day. As a tomboy with huge insecurities about my body and my clothing and the way I looked in general, I couldn’t wait to “develop” because the patriarchy is a mind-fuck. This one girl in my grade already had huge boobs and all the boys gave her “attention.” In retrospect, I imagine the constant sexual harassment was very unwanted and really kind of awful, but I wanted to be her and have everyone looking at me. Somewhere down in me, that’s what I wanted, as an 11-year-old child, but this is totally normal cool cool.
I actually got my period the next year and started to develop the huge boobies I have today. Amazingly, neither the training bra nor my actual boobs magically solved my very typical and very sad self-image issues.
Carmen Phillips, Associate Editor
It was less about my first bra as much as it was about my first bras. Multiple. When I was 10-years-old, I went from an A-cup to a D-cup in just a year. Within six additional months, I was wearing a triple-D. I’ve blocked out most of that time period as a blur of tears and breakdowns in my living room while my mom desperately tried to find something I’d wear. The thing about growing so rapidly was that my chest constantly hurt, physically hurt, all the time, as my skin stretched and marred (I have stretch marks criss-crossing my breasts to this day). The other thing thing about growing that fast was playing the game of not being noticed.
The summer after 5th grade, I was at a sleepover with my best friend since diapers. She was two years older than me and had not quite yet grown beyond a training bra, something that she had a lot of feelings about. When we played Truth-or-Dare she asked if I stuffed my bra. I told her the truth, No. She called me a liar! My choices were to either pull my shirt over my head and prove her wrong, or accept my punishment. I cried and begged to go home. Starting the next school year, some boys in my English class mercilessly made fun of a girl named Bianca because her breasts jiggled when she ran down the hallway. She had the largest boobs in class. My saving grace was having only the second largest.
My mom found minimizer bras? They weren’t quite sports bras, but they kind of pushed your boobs against yourself so that they would appear smaller under t-shirts. I remember them as mostly ugly and coming in what felt like “old people colors.” Still, they got the job done. I exclusively wore minimizers between middle school and most of college. They kept me hidden away at a time when that was all I wanted.
Vanessa Friedman, Community Editor
Have you heard of the brand Elita? I first learned about it when I was in elementary school. I haven’t thought about it in years, but writing it makes me sit up straight, makes me nervous, makes me excited, makes me remember. Elita encompasses so many things: popularity, anxiety, body hate, longing. Elita meant nothing to me for the first nine years of my life, until it meant everything.
See, here’s the thing: I got boobs when I was nine. Or honestly maybe even eight? I don’t know, I just know one day I was going about my business begging my mom for a sequined silver dress (I’ve always been me, you know?) and the next day she surprised me by purchasing that very dress I so badly desired. I put it on and stared at myself in the mirror and felt beautiful. Then I turned around and my little brother said, not unkindly, “wow, you have BOOBS.” I didn’t feel beautiful anymore and I stopped feeling beautiful for a long, long time.
Anyway the takeaway of that story should be: I had boobs before I wanted boobs, and I didn’t know what to do with them, and all the other girls in my grade did not have boobs yet, but they did have this other thing that they did not need that I needed very badly: an Elita.
Let me start again.
Elita is an underwear brand. It’s not particularly monumental in any way and I haven’t encountered it as an adult. I hope it’s not problematic. I literally haven’t thought about it in years. But in 4th grade Carly Cohen came to school one day and showed me her Elita, which was basically a very plain and very unnecessary black sports bra. It changed my whole life. I needed one. No like, I needed one. I needed it because Carly Cohen had it and I needed everything Carly Cohen had, and also like, listen, I fucking had boobs already. A-cups for sure, maybe a little bigger, I don’t know. I really needed a bra! I probably could’ve done with an actual bra with underwire, fuck my whole life. But I didn’t want just a bra. I wanted An Elita Like Carly Cohen. I wanted to feel beautiful again, I think. I think I thought an Elita would do the trick.
Elita is pronounced “uh-lee-duh.” Or at least, that’s how all the girls at my private Jewish day school, who did not have boobs but did have Elitas, pronounced it. I went home and told my mother, a recent South African immigrant who had trouble understanding the Canadian accent her daughter had acquired at the best of times, that I needed an Uh-Lee-Duh. A what? I rolled my eyes, spelled it out for her. Well, I tried to anyway. “ALEEDA,” I scratched on the pink notepad that lived next to the phone. Duh, mom.
My mother is the most patient, most dedicated woman when it comes to helping her kids. She becomes furious if I have a problem she cannot solve. (This isn’t ever stressful at all, LOL.) Her love language is gift giving. She really wanted to find me an ALEEDA. She searched everywhere. Online shopping didn’t really exist yet and, even if it did, my mother doesn’t believe in it (yes, still). She went to mall after mall, trying to decipher the scrawl her angry boob-having nine-year-old daughter had written on the pink piece of paper. I think she wanted to help me feel beautiful again.
Finally my mom talked to Carly Cohen’s mom and discovered that an ALEEDA was an Elita. She bought me two, one white and one black, and they did nothing to press my chest flat the way all the other girls looked in their sports bras, but for a little while, I was almost happy in my body again. Almost.
I don’t remember my first bra exactly, though it was probably a training bra and mostly likely from Sears or JC Penney. But I do remember being the last girl in my class to need one and getting teased because of it. And even when I grew breasts (that sounds so agricultural), they were never that big, and I stopped wearing them except for sports and see-through shirts. That’s pretty much my M.O. today, but now I’ve discovered the professorial sweater vest for my see-through men’s dress shirts and I rarely pull my one bra out of the back of my underwear drawer.
I just guffawed at the use of the word “agricultural.” That’s so accurate and distressing and hilarious.
When I was in the first grade a girl in my class that I definitely had a crush on told me she had a secret and then proceeded to show me the strap of her hello kitty bra. I was immediately desperate for one of my own, so when I went home I begged my mother for a bra. I definitely didn’t need one yet and wouldn’t for another four years or so, but regardless my mother went out and, much to my delight, found the exact same hello kitty bra my friend had.
I also owned a hello kitty training bra as a tween!
IIRC, my first bra was was from target, a tiny thin little bralette thing with matching panties. I wanted to wear it to the pool like a bathing suit. As I got older and my tits got bigger, victoria’s secret was my own personal hell. One tittie was huge and spilling out of the stupid lace cups, the other didn’t even fill it. My friends called me “the bra fairy” in high school because i was always buying bras only to realize they didn’t fit and gift them to my friends. In late high school i started going to specialty bra shop that sold bras in my size (that range from 30-32-34 and D-DD-E) for $99 a piece.
At this point in my life, basically none of my bras fit great. Did you know bras are only built to last 180 wears? And definitely not 3 years. I have sports bras that squish me into oblivion, Soma bras with wires that probably shouldn’t do that, and flimsy C cup trinkets that only serve to make my tits look huge in the 20 minutes i tease my partner before sex.
Recent partner was a binder-wearing-human. I tried on the binder just to see if maybe that was something I wanted to try next. it was a hard NOPE. didn’t like the way i looked or felt or felt about how i looked. idk what my gender is, but it definitely has tits.
That last sentence!
I don’t have a very vivid memory of getting my first bra, other than the overwhelming mortification of talking with my mother about my body in any way.
I don’t really remember my first except for embarrassment over the whole thing, but I do remember finally finding the right bra: a padded underwire front-closure racerback sports bra with nice thick straps. I put it on, bounced up and down experimentally, and literally said out loud, “Heh heh heh.” Then I bought as many as I could afford and went to play racquetball with my now-husband and kicked his ass cheerfully all over the court, because damn it was good to have support without straps somehow simultaneously cutting into and falling off of my shoulders. Racerbacks go bragh! (Hi Erin!)
I feel like the fact that I have zero memories of early bras and also of my body changing in any way says a lot about how I internalized my body having no importance.
My mother was 900% opposed to the idea of me “becoming a woman” and my body mostly cooperated with her. I didn’t get my period until I was 17,and I had the world’s tiniest boobs until I was 19 and already had left home to live my gay truth. However, my Cool Aunt took pity on me the summer I turned 15 and got into a creative writing camp at a womens college in Virginia (I KNOW), and she secretly took me to Kohl’s to pick out some 32AA bras and some underwear that didn’t come out of a Hanes 10-pack bag. I chose, of course, three matching rainbow print bras in different colors, and proceeded to proudly wear them at camp and come out to everyone there for two weeks before coming back home and shoving myself fully back in the closet. Ah, high school.
I have a lot of feelings about bras so I really enjoyed reading all your feelings about bras!!! So very here for all varieties of bra feelings. ❤️ Thanks for this roundtable hooray!
I do not remember my first bra, although I do remember having to say very awkwardly to my mum ‘I think… I need to start wearing a bra… maybe?’ and it was prrrrrobably from Marks and Spencers because that is where all my mum’s bras come from. But I DO remember my mum’s cousin who lives in Australia sending me a lilac, lace trimmed, unpadded bra (probably more of a bralette really) which I definitely wore to the point of grossness and well past where I needed something more supportive!
My feelings about bras now mainly relate to them fitting properly; I am extremely lucky never to have experienced dysphoria about my boobs and I generally feel positive about them. But I have very specific bra preferences (I will only wear padded-but-not-push-up plunge bras) coupled with an annoyingly scarce bra size (narrow back size and large cup size) and therefore I currently only own 3 bras, which again is probably gross, but it is because they cost SO. MUCH. MONEY!!! The fact that this bra size is so scarce is one of my high horses because I am fairly certain that most people in the UK are wearing too large a back size and too small a cup size precisely because retailers just don’t make the right sizes, and also because M&S fittings are… not reeaaally all that accurate.
I am a bit sad that I’ve never really discovered the joy of sports bras. I mean I LOVE my sports bras for running and gym-ing and very much Feel Myself in a muscle tee and a sports bra at the gym but they are not comfy to wear when I am just going about life and not doing something that requires a sports bra. Maybe one day I will find a comfy sports bra for house wear!
Sarah, you mention a large cup size – have the sports bras you tried been the shelf-bra style that basically give you a uniboob? If that’s the problem, check out an underwire style. I went from “ugh I hate sports bras” to wearing nothing else. Uh, I mean, except more clothes on top of the bras. Usually. ;)
Oh @sarahyarn re sports bras, this was me too! I didn’t get how people wore them all the time, even though I loved wearing them at the gym so much. Then I realized that what I considered a sports bra was like, that really intense, tight, elaborate whole deal that keeps you really tucked in for gym-going, but there are some that are basically just like, a strip of cotton. For being around the house/weekend errands/honestly at this point going to work (but I work at a very casual workplace and wear lots of layers so ymmv), I really love these Calvin Klein bralettes: https://www.calvinklein.us/en/womens-clothing/womens-bralettes/modern-cotton-bralette-52003785-052 or https://www.amazon.com/Calvin-Klein-Womens-Modern-Bralette/dp/B077V4LPSH. The fact that they’re $15-$30 depending where you buy is ridiculous considering it’s legit just a slip of cotton, but they are like the only actually comfortable bras I’ve ever worn and I cannot recommend them enough.
I needed a bra before I was even old enough to comprehend what it meant. I remember my mom and grandma telling me I wasnt allowed to wear white tee shirts anymore the summer after second grade (I very distinctly remember this on a summer day while we were out garage sale-ing, an activity I hated unless the garage sale had books). I didn’t understand why, and my mom didn’t know how to explain puberty to an 8-year-old.
A few weeks later, she gave me a little book set on puberty and bodies (I remember it was through American Girl? Not at all associated with their dolls though? “The Care & Keeping of You” series), which made me feel very grown up, but I still did not ask for or agree to wear a bra.
A few months later, once school started, my friends started whispering to each other and to my mom that I should be wearing a bra, and I walked around with my arms folded high over my chest until my mom quietly brought me home a mix of sports bras (one set was plain, the other set had Tweety bird on the front), and I exclusively wore sports bras (sometimes doubled up, for maximum flattening) for the next 6 years.
When I was 15, my best friend (who I had a crush on, but was too depressed to realize at the time) found out I didn’t have any “regular” bras, and also I liked how she looked in hers (LOL @ this in retrospect), so I finally bought a few tee shirt bras, which has been my favorite style ever since. I remember the first day I came home with one, just walking around in jeans and my new bra the next morning (only mom + sisters were ever home), and being amazed it could be so comfortable.
I hate any sort of padding at all, and stick to neutral colors that match my shirt and/or underwear to the extent possible. I hate having to shop for bras though, because it’s very difficult to find band sizes < 32 for cup sizes D or larger in regular stores, and exclusively buy what I already know I like on-line ever 6 months to a year (or however often until they're too stretched out to do the job).
It's weird to think back on my embarrassment through adolescence, when I feel so comfortable in my skin today.
The Care and Keeping Of You was the Bible as far as I was concerned as a kid!
I just gave the first one to my nearly-eight-year-old, but not before I wrote her a LOT of notes in it. Some of the “this is how it happened for me” variety and some more like “notice how every made-up letter from a girl here assumes that you’ll want to lose and/or avoid gaining weight? How would that make a reader feel if she had a rounder body shape?” I mostly think the book is good – wouldn’t have given it to her otherwise – but wouldn’t hand it over without encouraging questioning.
*repressed not depressed
…lots of typos in that post, sorry!
My parents were hippies back in the day and my mom doesn’t wear a bra. She asked me once if I wanted one and I said no. I wanted to be comfortable/confident in my body, but mostly found shirts with prints or pockets to hide my chest. I bought one sports bra in high school from somewhere for running but it was uncomfortable and I only wore it for running. It wasn’t until I started identifying as queer instead of asexual in my late twenties that I became interested in bras and bought myself some. I find bras sexy.
I know I was in 6th grade which is the last year of elementary school rather than middle school like some places. I was definitely checking out other girls at that age… probably by 7th grade I decided it wasn’t okay to look at girls’ boobs but I was still so young and innocent back then.
So, I noticed that maybe bras were starting to happen and I probably surreptiously slipped a white sports bra into our stuff when I was shopping with my mom. I’m sure she noticed it didn’t make a big deal about it. I remember wearing it for the first time and even remember the outfit I wore. The straps were definitely showing a little bit but if anyone mentioned that I blocked it out.
The continued act of bra shopping was a little bad though. Also, when my grandma died my mom gave me all of her bras and that made up the majority my stash but they were already too small for me both in band and cup. I guess the thinking was that since I was young these fit me even though they did not fit me.
My sister and me came home from school in the fifth grade to find bras on our beds. Our mother never said a word. At least I had my sister to be in it with me.
Are you from a repressed Southern Christian family, too? Cuz I know all about not talking about it.
Woowwwww!!! I’m so sorry this was such an awkward experience for so many of you. It was really embarrassing for me, too, when my mom took me shopping at Marshalls for my first bra when I was 12! I started out wearing this ugly hand-me-down from my sister that was striped… I turned 12 around 1995, when Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill album was all the rage. I played it on repeat non-stop that year, and she’s still one of my idols today. Anyway, once, when I was playing this album, my mom walked in with the hand-me-down, helped me put it on right over my shirt and sang, “You’re an honorary bra-skateer!” I’m glad my first new one from Marshall’s was soft and pretty with no ugly stripes!
Before she sprung my first bras on me, unsuspecting, during an otherwise routine JC Penney expedition, my mom had been making what she probably thought were clever and portentous quips about Boys Paying Attention. I was in fifth grade, and understood that my body had gone and made a nuisance of itself while I wasn’t looking. It seemed, somehow, that there was something inherently slovenly about the existence of boobs, but that bras were also a capitulation of sorts. I had the barest suggestion of protruding flesh, and ferociously resented having to think of my body as a thing that was visible to other people at all.
She steered straight for the bralettes, which seemed constructed to achieve abominable levels of itchiness, complete with flesh-eating elastic, ruched-up lace and bows. But the worst news was still to come. After I got through my first full day at school wearing a bra, I was only too relieved to get home and release myself from its clutches. “No!” mom exclaimed, half amused at this bid for freedom. “You have to wear it all the time! You can only take it off when you go to sleep!”
“ferociously resented having to think of my body as a thing that was visible to other people at all.”
Yuppp. I had never realised I felt this way until you said those exact words in the exact right way and I guess I read them in the exact right moment.
I exclusively called bras “implements of torture” for the first two years I wore them, so that’s indicative.
Well lets see, in high school I remember how I would steal clothes from my little sister every time I got left home alone, but her bras wouldn’t fit me.
So my first bra would have been around age 24, I came out as trans to an internet friend of mine (I had to go to an entire different state to feel safe), and she agreed to “protect” me while I shopped in the women’s section of Walmart.
I still have it in fact, It doesn’t fit, but I don’t wanna throw it away. It was a cheap bra, I don’t remember the bra, (I don’t wanna drag it out.) it’s pretty heavily padded, and has these raised hearts of padding inside. Never understood why. I had momentary of wondering if I had real boobs if I’d feel it, but quickly sussed out that wouldn’t be possible.
I don’t remember my first bra at all – lost in the fog of depression and dissociation – but I so clearly remember when my boobs started to appear. I got out of the bath one night, dried off, and thought “why does my chest hurt?” I stared at my chest for the longest time, poking the sore boob (Rightie didn’t emerge for a couple more days), wondering how big they’d get, feeling not at all ready for any of this.
I don’t remember my first bra, but I DO remember that my mom’s version of the talk was to tell me that I was going to grow “nu-nus and fuzz.” NU-NUs and FUZZ. I decided then an there to never ever ask my mom anything related to sex or puberty or bodies ever again.
A few years ago, I brought up the whole nu-nus and fuzz thing and discovered that my mom had blocked it out. She swears that she would never use those words. Relatedly, I totally plan on getting turtles and naming them nu-nus and fuzz so that I can taunt my mom until the end of her days.
I was extremely upset when they taught us about growing boobs in fifth grade. I was a mega-tomboy and the idea of having breasts on MY body was reprehensible to me. My mom told me that sports bras were a type of bra that could make breasts look flatter, and I vowed to wear them always. Looking back, what I essentially wanted was a binder, and I’m very thankful that I was flat enough that sports bras did the job.
(I had a best friend who at the time was similarly tomboyish, and I assumed she and I would spend the coming years of puberty flattening our chests together. I was shocked when she actually embraced the changes, and also embraced boys. It was my first real clue that gender was going to be a different thing for me.)
(Of course, sometime in high school I had a total turn-around and became a much femme-ier person who wished to be less flat. Gender is fluid and weird!)
I’m thankful now that my mom was a practical, minimalist Asian American career woman who firmly believed that underwear should be white, beige, or another shade of boring. My first bra was a heather gray training bra with zero cutesy details that would identify it as a “girly” thing. My mom and I have never been on the same page about gender and bodies, but this was an instance in which our different mindsets united over one bra.
I remember needing to wear a bra in like fourth grade. I remember getting so, so mad at my mom when we went shopping, and when she would tell me which shirts I had to wear one with. I was also taller and bigger than even all the boys in my school (sadly I stopped growing in middle school and have stuck it out at 5’8″), so having my body betray me in that way too was just an additional problem. I also remember binding with ace bandages (so bad!! Why did no one stop me?!) because I couldn’t deal with having to wear a bra. I then spent my teenage years feeling like my chest size was the only positive attribute about my body, so I had a lot of complicated feelings when I realized I was nonbinary and wanted to start binding (although thankfully not with ace wraps this time)