When it comes to beauty ideals and the self-loathing they inspire, however, breasts stand alone. I should know. For more than 20 years, I have been an A cup–just barely. In all that time I have never, not once, had a stranger stare at my chest. I’ve been admired, loved, lusted after. I’ve had my share of attention but not my share of breasts. As much as I want to deny it, it pisses me off. It is time, I decide, to stop traffic. It is time to join the ranks of the well endowed.
JULIA ROBERTS TO BE JUST ANOTHER PRETTY WOMAN. Now she’s an Academy Award-winning actress. In between, things changed. Specifically, her breasts.
“It takes a village to create that cleavage.” That’s what Roberts said about her bustline in Erin Brockovich, the movie for which she won the Oscar. The village she was referring to was led by costume designer Jeffrey Kurland. Working with directors like Woody Allen and Neil Jordan, Kurland has designed women’s undergarments for a variety of physiques, from Queen Latifah’s to Robert Downey Jr.’s. For Brockovich he made Roberts’s modest breasts look like two U-boats preparing to surface.
When I meet Kurland he is wearing jeans, a ponytail, and a silver bracelet on his wrist. He’s just dropped off his six-year-old daughter at school. He laughs easily and seems to enjoy his work. So I ask him to build me some submarines of my own.
Kurland is intrigued by what he calls my “sociological experiment.” “Very Margaret Mead-y,” he says. He agrees to help me but issues a warning: “You’re going to get a negative and a positive reaction, People don’t tag girls with big breasts as rocket scientists.” He predicts that I will begin to view myself differently, too. “You’re going to look down,” he says, “and see something you didn’t see before.”
I’m counting on it. I want to glimpse how the busty half lives. And maybe, finally, I’ll get this damn monkey off my chest,
NUMBER OF MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons who work in California: 648. Number of states that have more ASPRS members than California: o. Number of members of the California Society of Plastic Surgeons who work in Los Angeles County: 114. Average number of CSPS members in California’s 30 other counties that have members: 103. Number of women in the United States who underwent augmentation mammoplasty in 2000:212,500. Percentage of those performed in California: 22. Increase in the national number of breast augmentations since 1991:300 percent.
MY MOTHER NEVER TOOK ME BRA SHOPPING. SMALL breasted herself, not to mention free spirited, she didn’t wear bras. She saw them as pointless, and during my teens, my body didn’t do anything to convince her otherwise. Since then I’ve explored lingerie stores with curiosity and mystification but without much urgency.
Jeffrey Kurland needs building materials. He wants underwires with molded cups and wide, multihooked straps in back for support. He needs “half pads” “whole pads”–chicken cutlet-shaped pieces of foam with which to force me inward and create, for the first time, a valley where now there is a plain. In the intimates department at Bloomingdale’s, I buy all these things. I buy bras with silicone inserts, with air-filled pillows, even with water balloons. I buy a B cup, a C cup, and one that promises to take me from a C to a D.
Since I last laid eyes on a padded bra, the technology has become outlandish. So has the language. There are “Sexy Fit” bras with removable “cookies,” “[H.sub.2]O Smooth Water” demicups, “Liquid Kiss” bras, and the “Original Oxygen Lift” with “100% natural air.” These things don’t just make the most of what you’ve got. They treat you as the foundation upon which to add a couple of floors.
A lot of women see these breakthroughs as cause for rejoicing. I don’t. In fact, I’ve always understood breast implants better than I understand the padded bra.
If big breasts really matter to you, a boob job delivers. To be sure, a woman who undergoes major–and from a health standpoint, unnecessary–surgery to enlarge her breasts is taking a risk. But what she gets for her pain and money is what our culture has encouraged her to want: a more Barbie-shaped body. The man or woman she lies down with will likely know that her big breasts weren’t made by Mother Nature. But the illusion will be maintained, with clothes or without.
