the teats.

It’s absurd how political a playground can be. Hierarchical social groups and cliques. Leaders and followers. Nerds, geeks, jocks, loners, bitches, troublemakers, ditzes, gossips. The labels that are assigned by adults and children, alike, which are then perpetuated and regurgitated thoughtlessly, and endlessly for all time.

The basketball courts for one group, the kickball diamond another. The swings, the see-saw. They were all reserved turfs. They would shift from time to time, but they always remained reserved. You needed to belong to a group to achieve access.

In my younger years, I was a bit of a loner. It wasn't that I didn't desire to have friends, but I found them inconstant, and prone to participation in the societal dance for acceptance and approval, a cotillion for which I had never catered to, nor been invited to participate.

I was an attractive, pale, skinny blonde girl with light hazel eyes, rocking a pair of pink plastic glasses. I have a lovely singing voice. I was the kid you sit next to during quizzes or exams. Physically, I developed early—around the sixth grade.

I was picked on and bullied consistently.
People I’d never met perpetuated rumors about me. People I’d rarely interacted with created them.  

It wasn't always so bad, but I found one has to develop a thick shell. It backfires on occasion. That thick shell gets heavy, and you can come to resent it from time to time. That you would be required to wear it in the first place. Why should you have to shoulder the arrogance of confidence as a protective shield?

But then you develop actual confidence. And then you’re derided for that, too.

When I was younger, I was considered too pale. I was asked on a weekly, sometimes daily basis if I was albino. Often by people who knew better, but were trying to get a laugh. Albinism is a genetic disorder in which a person has partial or complete loss of pigmentation (coloring) of the skin, eyes and hair. I do not happen to be albino.

As an aside, people who are born with albinism often face ostracism, and occasionally, violence, from their community. I can’t say I've dealt with even a fraction of the issues someone who lives with such a disorder faces. But I wasn't left untouched.

I was told constantly that I needed to get out in the sun. Go get a healthy tan. You’re too pale, don’t you ever go outside?

This was during the first waves of the tanning bed craze. The early nineties, when people were overcooking in beds. Turning your skin orange was fashionable. (There seems to have been a recent resurgence in popularity).

And for a minute, I tried in vain to tan. My sisters have the right skin for it. They could achieve a ‘healthy’ tan. I turn lobster red. Insanity would have been repeating the same process and expecting different results. I learned my lesson. I burn. I gave up on the hopes of ever achieving a so-called ‘healthy glow.’

People have never shut the hell up about it.

For ‘white’ people, I’m just too white.

When you’re ‘too’ anything in our culture, it gets brought up constantly.

As a child, I was frequently apprised of being:

Too pale

Too white

Too ghostly

Too smart

Too intelligent

Too opinionated

Too insubordinate to elders (I’m from Indiana. Some of my fellow hicks deserve a healthy dose of irreverence for the insane things that they say).

Too loud

Too precocious

Too political

Too outspoken

Too talkative

Too vulgar

Too literal

Too subversive

Too plain        

Too pretty (?!)

Too self-aware

Too stupid to know I was supposed to be attracting boys (a specific confrontation with a bitch named Jessica in the sixth(!) grade in regard to my haphazard ponytail… how I wish I’d had made a comeback then to such absurdity)..

Too confident
Too active
Too reckless

Too much of a show off (for enjoying singing, and being quite good at it)

Too much of a know it all

Too direct

Too honest

Too assertive

Too stuck in my own imagination

Too happy

Too energetic

Too enthusiastic

Too comfortable with my own body

Aren't most of the things above, good things?

Is it people’s insecurities that make them so at the ready to stifle others?

The last on the list triggered this current rant.

I am comfortable with my body.

I like it. Whether I'm 85 kg or 65 kg, I’m an attractive and shapely woman.

I don’t really work out, and since I was once a dancer for a decade and a half, my body still keeps a decent shape. (It doesn't hurt I walk several kilometres a day through deep sand, though).

I’ll admit my shoulders are a little broad, but, they help me heft things during stints of manual labor, so I really can’t complain too much.

All in all, I like me. And I don’t feel an apology is in order for not being self-conscious about the way I look.

I have average sized breasts. Not big, not little. They’re just there.

I do not wear, and have never regularly worn, brassieres.

Since I started to develop at age 11, I rarely felt the need to wear a bra.

In athletics, and while dancing.. Sure. Wrap ‘em up and strap ‘em down.

But daily life? I never saw the point.

To me, brassieres feel uncomfortable (yes, even when sized correctly) and I just didn't understand why, for so many people, my breasts were a major concern for them..

My father asserted on multiple occasions that my lack of bra was indecent.

My camp counselor complained, and tried garner support from other counselors to institute an underwear dress code policy (she was an idiot, and didn't realize she was flirting with a lawsuit, quite obviously).

Other females in my peer group would call me variations of slut, whore, and prostitute.

Strangers (usually women) would come up to me, berate me, and ask me why I wasn't wearing a bra.

This was all before I was 14 years old.

People consistently tried to make me feel uncomfortable about my own body, and my choice to not wear a miniature strait-jacket to reshape and artificially lift my breasts.

I've always wondered why it’s such a hot topic.
And why people think they have the right to discuss my breasts outright in conversation, as if they don't belong to me at all.

What is wrong with the natural shape of my breasts?

Who deemed it a requirement to hold them up in uniform half circle cups, just so?

There aren't any adverse medical side effects from not wearing one...

And in fact, a study completed within the past decade highlights that constant artificial support can actually make the muscles fibrous, and cause the sagging effect that so many women seem to fear.

Boobs. Boobies. Tits. Teats. Breasts. Jugs. Cans. Racks.

They’re just sacs of fat hanging around in the event I choose to have kids and decide to offer them up for feeding.

Breasts are constantly sexualized, and they’re something of which heterosexual males are so fond… Sure, they’re soft and squishy, and nice to get a handful of, but while breasts can be an erogenous zone… So is the inside of my elbow, my wrist, my neck. Skin in general—an organ—not a sexual organ, but certainly relevant in the general enjoyments of sex. We want to be touched. Enjoying sex does not make you a slut. And whether a woman is wearing a bra or not is not a litmus test as to how soon she’ll be primed for mating. 

Women who do not wear bras simply do not wear bras.

I live, now, in southern Africa.

Many, many, women here do not bother with a bra. Its just another layer of clothing in this absurd heat. Female PCVs often talk about how they're adjusting to Namibian women being so comfortable with their bodies. Males bring it up too, but not in the same way. They've been introduced to un-self-conscious breast-feeding, which doesn't happen often in ‘Western’ culture.

Because I’m an American, and therefore one of ‘them’ I get a lot of flack in regard to my unbound breasts. A lot of skeptical and suspicious questioning, or comments—by women particularly..

The origin of this particular tirade is this:

We trade slights more readily in our culture than we trade compliments.

And the compliments we seem to muster are so often offered wholesale and speciously.

The other day I met a lovely woman in our Peace Corps lounge.

She had just transferred to our group, and we got onto the topic of age, and shared ours in a round. She has fantastic skin, and I mentioned it.

Before she could even process the compliment, or reply, I was derided outright, by another woman, for offering an honest compliment. As if my mentioning that this woman has great skin was, in fact, an insult if one factored in her age..

What was inappropriate about this earnest compliment? 

Was this other woman offended I didn't compliment her, instead? If so, why?
It seemed a gross overreaction.

Later at dinner, the group reconvened.

Four women who had known each other for a year’s time, and our new addition.

At one point in the dinner, a remark was directed toward me, that it was “surprising that [I] wasn't a fan of Halloween, because I must really love those slutty costumes, because [I] don’t wear a bra.”

I must be honest, it left me reeling. Because I don’t wear bras, I should enjoy overtly sexualized and demeaning Halloween costumes? Forget that my current state of dress—baggy cotton pants and an oversized sweater—covering me from ankle to wrist was antithetical to the rude implication of the comment... I tried to shake off how offensive this absurd and thoughtless remark was, and move on… So I got around to ordering..

I asked the waiter for the bar menu and he brought me back the wine list.

I ordered wine.

It wasn't in stock. I figured I’d check out the list and make another selection.

When I realized he’d brought only a wine list and not the bar menu, he’d already moved over to the next table. It was a full house and a busy night.

I figured I’d ask again on his next pass. No rush.

He comes back. I ask for the bar menu. He says he doesn't think there is one. I ask if he’s sure, and which beers do they have? He tells me there are only three beers, not enough for a list. (But fails to tell me their prices or options).

Although I have ordered from the bar menu a half dozen times, and was surprised, I didn't pursue it, because it seemed silly to argue the point. I’d just settle with wine. He’d told us at the start of the meal that he was new, and I figure he’ll find out about the half-size menus stored at the bar at some point.

I ordered another bottle of wine instead.

No big deal.

This second exchange took about thirty seconds, tops.

He left the table, and the three women I knew well jumped all over me for being rude.

For asking someone for a bar menu?

Wouldn't it have been rude to argue the point, go get the menu from the bar two rooms away and wave it in his face? Did I do anything remotely close to that? I didn't think so.

I was taken aback.

How is it that these women who were wholly nonchalant when another suggested that I must like to dress ‘slutty’ because I don’t wear bras, are so wholly offended on behalf of a stranger being asked a standard question in the course of his job?

Who else am I supposed to ask for a menu or drink prices?

The gardener?

And why is the perceived offense more important than the insult you've just dealt to a person you’re dining with? Was it because he is Namibian? Does that automatically make him someone to protect? And isn't that protectionism more than a little insulting?

I’ll admit, this soured my mood for the rest of the evening. I felt ganged up on, and then was told I was making people uncomfortable by my mentioning that I was offended by the belittling comment made toward me. What?!  What is it I’m allowed to say or talk about?

Should I talk about the music and the size of the room? The number of couples?

Peoples from so-called 'Western societies' have the strangest sense of entitlements.

This occurs to me often in the arrogant way that Americans, in particular, feel that they have the ability to embark upon any topic, without having any expertise or first-hand information, versus the trivia they've accumulated second and third-hand. Masters of bull-shit, we are..

There are also the times, too, when someone will point out cultural, or personal choices that break from social norms with derision and ignorance. Dismissive of difference. As if people should just get used to ‘the way it is’ for the greater good. Don’t disrupt the flow.

Plus we can be loud, brash, and often thoughtlessly cruel in the manner in which we speak.

Why am I considered rude for telling someone honestly and earnestly, without aggression or viciousness, that they've said something I know to be disrespectful or untrue? Why should I be treated like a caricature of myself, simply because some people find me to be ‘different?' I am not impervious to insults or slights. They hurt, and they piss me off. I have no problem asserting my right not to be taken down a few pegs simply because someone dislikes me or my choices—especially in things that affect them in no way, whatsoever…

It's too bad that it might make you less uncomfortable if I were uglier, had acne, a darker skin tone, and less long blonde hair. Or if you’d like it more if I were stupid, unintelligible, or depressed. Or for any resentment you may have for my possession of a body type that I had nothing to do with, apart from acquiring my parent’s particular combination of DNA.

I feel no need to apologize for things outside my control.

Furthermore, these are things about myself I have no desire to change.

Work on yourself. I’m doing just fine.

I once had an ex-boyfriend (in my mid-twenties) tell me that I should put on a bra because if it turned cold that night, ‘people would be able to see that I have nipples’…

See that I have nipples?

Doesn't everyone have nipples?

Why might someone knowing I possess them set off a frenzy?

Some people are just hopeless...

The above digital art illustration, 'Boobs' by UK designer Tiago Caetano, can be found here.