Does Size Matter?

The following is an essay I read last Friday at BraVa, an event sponsored by Marion Roach Smith and the YWCA in Troy, NY. Marion is the author of The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing and Life, which I highly recommend. The YWCA houses many women in crisis or transition, so the purpose of the event was to raise money for the facility and to provide bras of all sizes for women in the community who need them. Therefore, every member of the audience and every writer who performed their piece donated a bra.

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When I was in sixth grade, a bra was still called a brassiere, named I assumed after its inventor, some Frenchman with a first name like René or François. Its cups were made of cotton and shaped like rocket cones aimed for the stars. Entering junior high for the first time, however, I wore a JC Penney undershirt and Hush Puppies with ankle socks. All to say, in an era when Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield were literally pushing the lingerie envelope, I was a Skipper Doll in a Barbie world.

Within the first week of school, my gym teacher, Mrs. Fraser, herded all the sixth-grade girls into the auditorium for a movie sponsored by Kotex called: The story of Menstruation. As I sat in the dark, the screen filled with animated flowers blooming and girls becoming women. Internal organs were overlaid with diagrams and calendars that left me with a vague sense of embarrassment and no practical idea of what having a period entailed. When we girls got back to class, the boys sniggered. When Debbie Caldwell, who sat beside me, whispered what you actually did with a sanitary belt and pad, I wanted to scream, that’s disgusting! But she assured me you got used to it. The film said every girl developed at her own speed. That explained why Darla DiCaprio, who had bouffant hair, Cleopatra eyeliner, and frosted pink lipstick, had raced into a D cup ahead of me.

Darla didn’t matter because she wasn’t a close friend, but when my best friend, Marie, invited me and my other two besties, Linda and Laura, to sleep over, boy did it matter. It was a sultry summer evening, and we laid our sleeping bags on the dewy grass behind her dilapidated garage where no one could see us. Once it was pitch black, Marie, Linda, and Laura took off their blouses to reveal, ta-da, brand new white training bras that seemed to glow in the moonless dark. When I took off my blouse, there I was in my JC Penney special. Was my mom the only one who didn’t get the memo? Or were my bosoms, that’s what we called boobs back in the day, still so puny they weren’t worth training? The angst of becoming a woman in a man’s world hurtled towards me at the speed of adolescence.

Of course, my mom eventually bought me a bra, but honestly, I don’t remember exactly when. My memory is simply that I didn’t have one when compared to my peers. That was just the beginning of feeling ashamed and confused about my body. 

It was a confusing time. 1964, was also when the U.S. first bombed North Vietnam.  1969 was the summer of Woodstock, the legendary concert where psychedelic Grace Slick, singer of the Jefferson Airplane, invited an entire generation down the rabbit hole. Hippies and war protesters spawned mantras like make love not war, do your own thing, and question authority. So, what was a girl to do? I slept with my boyfriend, threw away my electric curlers, and cast aside all my bras as symbols of oppression.

That was a long time ago, and so much water has gushed under the bridge. By God’s grace, I’m finally at peace with the shape of my body and all the excruciating coming-of-age events that shaped my soul. But then coming of age is always excruciating. Every generation has their own form of cultural cataclysm. And getting a bra represents a female rite of passage.

So, I’ve chosen to donate a small soft cup bra, not unlike the one my mom bought me in our local department store, somewhere, if I recall correctly, near the Girl Scout uniforms. I do this in hopes that whoever receives this comfy little brassiere (which by the way, was invented by a French woman) will appreciate one thing I’ve learned over a lifetime: size doesn’t matter except as it concerns the heart.

So whatever size fits you, sister, feel free to wear it with or without Hush Puppies and ankle socks—because God loves variety, and God loves you!

Copyright 2022 Ann C. Averill

Cover photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Ann is working on a full length memoir about coming of age and coming to God in the Woodstock generation.

She is also the author of Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School about working in a poverty school, coming to the end of herself, and discovering her core identity and worth in Christ.