Body Love: B is for Boobs

Body love is not only about loving your body, but also about being aware of the fact that loving some parts of your body is always going to be a struggle. The step from acceptance, acknowledging that this is the way it is, to willingly embracing and loving your body, is difficult. I think it might even be impossible for some. Loving your body, and being kind to yourself about it, is on a spectrum. Any step you can take, even if it just one of going from self-hatred to acceptance, is better than being stuck with self-disgust and shaming yourself.

Extreme Self-Digust

I need to have that sort of perspective on body love because there are a few parts of my body, that I have very fluid feelings for. That is especially true for my boobs. I have never been able to love them, or to even be okay with them. I am mostly stuck in the realm of that I acknowledge their existence and that they look the way they do, but I don’t like them. But I can also really hate them, and be disgusted by them. For a while, I even considered that I have body dysmorphia because I wanted to get rid off them.

For several months, all my therapy sessions were about my urge to cut off and get rid off my breasts. I know that sounds very odd, especially because I don’t think that there were any gender identity issues involved (although looking back, it was maybe partly connected to a male alter fronting). I just hated them. And I felt they were in the way, they were ugly, their shape was terrible. I cried days and days about it. Having been overweight all my life, and being slim at that point in time, I was so very upset that their shape hadn’t changed with the weight loss. They still looked the same, just smaller. That overwhelming disgust for that part of my body slowly subsided, but has always been in the back of my mind.

I still have days when I feel the urge to vomit because I catch a glimpse of my boobs in the mirror. I would never ever leave the house without a bra. My boobs are the one part of my body, that I have a very difficult time taking pictures of. I think I will forever be stuck in the corner of acceptance but will never reach the stage of loving them the way that they are. They are not round, they are not perky, they are not the same size. And they have big areolas. They hang, they are droopy. I don’t have a cleavage to speak of because my boobs are not grown together on the top like they are for most women. There is nothing about them that is any way average. And I hate it.

What Others Think and Do

My dislike for my boobs has a lot to do with what others think of them, and how others react to them. As I mentioned on my post about my butt: I wished that other people’s opinions wouldn’t have that big of an effect on me. It all started when I began to develop breasts at a very young age. I must have been 8 or 9. And that brought on a lot of unwanted attention from the male sex. I am still convinced that some of the sexual assaults, and harassment, that I went through from ages 9 to 14, had a lot to do with my boobs and that they were bigger than the ones that other girls my age had.

And as we all know, teenagers can be cruel, and I had female friends of mine comment negatively on the size and shape of my boobs. There were jokes thrown around of calling them hoses and snakes (because of their shape), or shouting that we need to leave a store because they won’t have any bras for the big nasty tits of their friend. It was just hurtful, and for many years, I tried to hide my breasts under baggy clothes.

But not only that, I never allowed anyone to see them. I was in long-term relationships (well, teenage long term relationships, we are talking months, not years), and none of my partners was allowed to see my boobs. Touch under my shirt, sure, but see them? No. And that issue continued well into adulthood. I don’t think I have had sex without a bra on even once in my 12-year-long relationship with my ex-husband. And even now, I often try to wear a shirt or not take my bra off when I have sex. I would love to say that it is out of habit, but it is really because I still have those negative self-hating feelings about them.

So I am still stuck with the same perspective. I don’t like my boobs. And although I haven’t wanted to cut them off in years, I still sometimes dream about getting plastic surgery. I know that would be an extreme measure and I doubt I will ever get there. Instead, I have tried to do a few things to feel better about my breasts.

I realized that there is a big aerola fetish. So I joined a group on Fetlife and for a while I had a lot of people comment on my pictures and message me to tell me how they think my breasts are sexy. Only, in my head it goes like: my boobs are a niche fetish. They are not normal. They are freakish. No one without that fetish would ever think they look good. – Those are difficult thoughts to battle. I know that logically normal is an illusion. Everyone is unique. But emotionally, I just very much want to be like most women, have smaller perky boobs.

For a while I went on a search to find women with similar breasts in porn movies. Because if people watch those videos and get off to them, then they might find me attractive too? I can proudly present the findings of my extensive search (I clicked through thousands of videos, yes, I was obsessed): I found exactly one video. I found one woman that had boobs similar to mine. That was it. You can imagine how much of a downer that was for me. Again, you could say, well, you are unique, that is a good thing. Being different is good. You are memorable. Well, fuck that. In this particular area, I don’t want to stand out!

Changing my own Perspective?

The approach of looking for admiration from others didn’t really work for me. I mean, my partner is okay with my boobs, and still, it doesn’t change what I think of them. Instead, I need to look at how I personally can change my own perspective, without comparing myself to others, or looking for appreciation from others. And I have been trying to do some work there.

Yes, I have actively tried to feel better about my boobs. I bought some nice bras that push and squeeze them the right way. Fortunately, it is easier to get bras my size in North America than it was in Europe. And I am thinking more about angles now. With a bra, from a certain angle, I can say that my boobs don’t look that bad. But that is really how far it stretches for me at this point.

Posting pictures online, both on my blog and on Fetlife, is a way to challenge my own perspective. Not only do I sometimes get positive comments, it also shows that no one is attacking me or shaming me for my boobs. That is the one feeling I have been struggling with the most: Shame. I am ashamed of my boobs and that is why I have been hiding them, and that is why I still hesitate every time I consider posting a picture of them. Shame has to do with other people and what I assume they feel and think. It has nothing to do with the reality of things. It doesn’t matter what others think, I am the one that has to live with these boobs, and only what I think should matter. Only. I think they are terrible. So I am stuck.

I am doing the A to Z challenge during the month of April. My theme is Body Love. So you will get 26 posts from me, following the alphabet, related to the topic body love. You can check out more about the to A to Z challenge by clicking on the banner. You can find a list of sexbloggers participating in the challenge on Mrs Fever’s site.