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Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 22.2 (2001) 107-117



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Breast-less by Choice

Susie Lan Cassel


Songs Of Innocence

When I was twelve years old, my mother told me that she would pay for my breast surgery. I figured she was just picking on me again. She invariably thought I was too fat or too thin; my eyebrows were too thick, my legs too long, my torso too short, my hair too light, my skin too dark. Like certain primate mothers, my mother had a need to pick and preen. The minute I walked in the door, she saw things about me that called out for her attention. Maybe it was because she loved me, but it seemed I could never live up to her expectations. Or maybe this was just one of those things Chinese mothers did, but had my mother gone too far this time - offering cosmetic surgery to a seventh grader?

Luckily, despite my mother's complaints, at twelve I considered myself completely normal. My girlfriends and I talked endlessly about growing up, and we giggled excitedly about our budding bodies. One by one we started our periods, we learned to wear makeup, we lied about our age, and we noticed for the first time that boys were staring at our boobs. Even though we always protested politely, we enjoyed this new attention. It was attention I would later grow to abhor.

I was always the most shy and private one of the bunch, but my chest somehow made its way into conversations surrounding me. The comments were supposed to be compliments. Friends thought I should be flattered: "What do you do to get like that?" my girlfriends jealously asked. "We need to eat what she eats," I overheard others say. The school counselor believed she was doing me a favor when she took me aside and told me I should confront boys and say to them when they stared at me, "You're staring at my breasts!" Right, I thought, I was really going to say that. It seemed strange to me that so many people were talking about my boobs. I looked around school and saw plenty of girls bigger than I was, so I assumed that we were all getting the same treatment and that this was just a part of growing up. [End Page 107]

Then I began to notice some different reactions. I found out that the choir director rearranged our group photo when his wife told him to "get the big boobs out of the front row." People began calling me Dolly (as in Parton) and Susie Castles. A girl from a different school called and told me to stay away from her boyfriend, whom I didn't even know. Then one day I got to my locker and saw drawn in pencil a horrid caricature of a girl with boobs hanging down to her knees. One boob was much bigger than the other. I was mortified. How did someone know that I really looked like that? Was there a hole in the girl's locker room or one in my bedroom wall? I did have ugly, hanging protuberances that had grown out of control. They weren't the pretty boobs in the magazines; they were heavy, bouncing things that made it hard to breathe and awkward to walk or run. The cartoon captured my secret and it showed the world that I was big and deformed. I thought I had kept them well hidden. How did someone find out? It had to be a boy. They were always staring at me. I hated the one who did this. How could I face anyone again?

I wasn't the only one around who had big boobs. My older sister was busty too, but we were opposites in most other ways. She loved the attention she received from boys, so she wore smaller and tighter clothes to expose her body more. I think she sometimes enjoyed the fact that we shared this physical trait. "Chinese don't have big boobs," people...

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