If I move down the steps topless, I use a hand bra to hold them in place. Which means I grab my most precious double assets and cradle them like fragile glass as I groan my way to the first floor. I do this because my mother told me to.
If it sounded reasonable and highly vain, I’d listen to what she had to say. When I was a girl, not yet a woman, she told me to hold my fat sacks whenever I made sudden topless movements — especially when going down steps. She also said If I breastfed I should buy my tits a leash.
I felt I was faced with two choices as a young pregnant mom: breastfeed my baby and trip over my own tits so she could become a genius or I could let my nipples continue to point north while my child suffered through a grit-prohibitive path of remote-fondling, Cheeto-inhaling, math-deficient, boardroom-avoidant loserdom.
Obviously I chose the same path as the woman with the spectacular rack who gave me life.
Which was the wrong choice.
The universe said hold my Diet Coke this bitch thinks we’re playing and immediately gifted my full body the breast cancer gene as payback.
Good luck, Not Angelina Jolie.
I have a plan for that. I told my husband, Slasher, I said to him, “that headless sext of my tiddies I sent you the other day — when BRCA-2 takes me, make sure the photo next to my casket is the topless one. I look great.”
But with COVID though, I have become reckless. Do I still hold my delicious melons on the way downstairs? Absolutely, it’s like a muscle memory, a reflex. But wearing an actual bra? I don’t know her.
I am not alone. A few weeks ago Gillian Anderson said she was done, finished, no way, not gonna wear a bra ever again. "I'm so lazy and I don't wear a bra any more. I can't wear a bra. I'm sorry, I don't care if I reach my belly button, my breasts reach my belly button, I'm not wearing a bra anymore."
Gillian has found the truth and it is this: bras are bullshit.
I feel like we already knew this, but our jobs required that we cage up our mammaries with a slice of metal taken from the devil’s pitchfork. I mean there is no other reason we hung in this long with cotton-covered wire hangers rusting away in the sweaty nectar of under-boob.
Not to mention whenever I made the mistake of throwing an underwire bra in the washing machine, for the rest of its natural born life, I’d walk around like a creaky tinman in need of an oiling.
Now, if I am not free-boobing-it, I’ve started wearing bras made of some kind of pantyhose material. My breasts look like a couple of funbags are off to commit armed robbery. But comfortably. In a breathable fabric. From Target.
If committing a bodily felony is too much to handle (straps are their own kind of stupid torture, like paper straws but for your shoulders), I have a growing selection of bandeau bras that, when I have on my leopard leggings, I feel like Peg Bundy.
When I think about everything that has gone wrong in the past almost two-ish years, my boobs are not two of them. In fact, my not-milkers have thrived — going up the stairs or down. They’ve been able to stretch out and relax, breathe the open air, find a suitable wrapper when a little extra support or cushion is needed (or I don’t want to flash an areola greeting). So when I need something to grasp onto, something I haven’t lost that doesn’t suck, I’m keeping these two close.
CURRENTLY
On my nightstand: Every Body Shines // 16 stories about living fabulously fat
Reading: Britney Spears, Belly Buttons, and Me // I really enjoyed this
Watching: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night // It’s not about assault
Listening: No Fun: The Jen Kirkman Podcast // Love her
Coveting: This purply-pink liquid matte lippy // Vegan, Black-woman owned
Supporting: Claws Out, nail polish with a purpose // I’m partial to Blue State
If you love FLOP ERA, share it with the kind of person who couldn’t give a damn if they wear a bra again.