Perpetrated by my abusive mother
She was a beauty queen
Do you want to know what happens to the daughter of a beauty queen when she is to start the eighth grade flat-chested?
Well, let me tell you about my experience as such.
Mother, the former beauty queen, entered my bedroom and said, “These are for you.” It was a bra and two hard foam rubber fake breasts called falsies.
My mother said, “No daughter of mine is going into the eighth grade without a bra, much less without needing one.”
I was horrified
” No, please, no! Don’t make me wear those pointed falsies!” I begged. My dad was my next stop. “Please, Daddy, don’t let her make me wear those things.”
It was hours of crying and begging to no avail.
Once I showed up in those things
I would be laughed at and bullied, but my mother insisted. I tried to figure out how to get them out on the way to the bus stop or even on the bus. There was no way. The walk to the bus stop was wide open, and siblings surrounded me. I was going to have to live like this. Now, I was the skinny girl with the fake breasts.
In 1962, I weighed about sixty-five pounds and was under five feet. The bra was made for someone with more meat on their bones than me. I know now that they called these pointed bras from this time in history, Torpedo tits.
Trying to keep the falsies in the bra was a problem
There was no compartment within the bra to hold them in place. If I got hit in the falsie, it would turn in and be concave; as I said, they were made from the same foam as sofas.
The first silicone breast implants were coming on the market that same year, 1962. Thanks to two plastic surgeons, Thomas Cronin, Frank Gerow, and Dow Corning Corporation.
I would consider plastic surgery for my large nose before my small breasts. I wasn’t self-conscious about my flat chest, but the falsies nearly drove me crazy.
I carried my books around as much as possible, holding them in front of my chest. There were no book bags in those days. I wore many loose-fitting dresses and walked around with my arms crossed, trying to hide them.
Physical Education was the worst of all
I had to go into the locker room to change from my dress into shorts and blouses. School policy was only dresses or skirts for school and shorts for PE. I hid in the last shower stall. Then, we assembled in the gym to do a variety of exercises.
I would try to hide in the last row of classmates and on the corner. I had to get to the locker room as fast as possible when the class ended. The reason, one boob might be at my waist and the other on my shoulder! Because they traveled wherever they could during our exercises. I felt like everyone’s eyes were on my fake breasts. I huddled in the corner of a shower stall, put the falsies back in place, and put my slip and dress back on. Safety pins would not hold them in place. Several times, I thought about throwing them in the trash, knowing I would get beat by my mother. Then, I would think of going to PE with boobs and coming out flat-chested. Would it cause more talk than what is already going on?
As much as I loved school and it was an escape from my mother, I would have quit if I was of age. I would have had to leave home. I didn’t know who might take me in; my mother was so aggressive that probably no relative would say yes.
I was still flat-chested the following year
Mother said nothing. I am sure that people, and I mean most guys, would have noticed that I lost my boobs over summer break.
I weighed eighty-five pounds when I married in the fall of 1970 and barely needed a training bra.
Then, in the early 80’s, after camping over a weekend, I came home before my husband and sons to clean the house. I was not wearing a bra under my T-shirt when my husband came in, kissed me, ran his hand up my shirt, and said, “ You are tit-less.” I laughed as he turned red. I said that was no surprise to me; I had been tit-less for years. He said, “I meant bra-less.”
After a hysterectomy at twenty-nine, I gained some weight and had breasts for the first time. Now, at seventy-five, I get to laugh because they are still perky! If Mama could see me now.
