Why, hello. Fancy seeing you here. Fancing seeing me here. Been a minute. Been, in fact, almost two years. I will tell you all about why I’ve been gone, what I’ve been doing, and what my life looks like now in short order. Rest assured (or, depending on your perspective, be annoyed—or better yet, worried) that I am back for good. I can conceive of no reason why I would disappear again. My reason for disappearing was dead simple—a dead simple problem that I have now solved. But we’ll get into that.
First, I want to talk about The Substance—but before we can do that, we need to talk about my tits.
We’ll do this in six vignettes.
(One note before we start—and this will apply to everything I write from here on out—the kid gloves with which I have always treated people on these pages? Those are gone. Those got tossed in the Goodwill bin before I thought better of it and decided to burn them for warmth since Chicago, at times over the past three years, has been really, really fucking cold. Before I had three years to fully absorb and reflect on the degree to which those kid gloves were so very undeserved in the first place. But we’ll get into that, too. For now know that no deserving party will escape the quill that time, reflection—and at long last, clarity—have so exquisitely, mercilessly sharpened. Smiley face.)
Vignette the First
I am seventeen years old. I have my first major role in a high school theatre production. Heretofore I have been a writer/director of student productions, an assistant director to seasonal productions, a prop master, and enjoyed (?) a handful of supporting parts, such as Kangaroo Who Parts Curtains at Beginning of Peter Pan.
The play is Rumors, by Neil Simon. I am playing Chris Gorman.
Today, we are costume shopping. For some reason, this is taking place in the basement of someone’s house. Likely a friend of our drama teacher, probably someone professionally involved in local theatre. The basement is full of racks and racks of clothes of formal and semi-formal wear. Myself and the other teenage girls playing the roles of adult women are told to pick out cocktail dresses for the dinner party scene.
Cocktail dresses. Not prom dresses, not juniors or misses dresses. Cocktail dresses. If you’re not a woman, you’ll not understand this (and if you’re not a woman WOO BOY are you in for a ride today), but only the more developed of teenage girls will be able to wear a cocktail dress. Only a girl with breasts has the infrastructure to support the kind of neckline found in most cocktail dresses. The very quiddity of a cocktail dress is in what it reveals, what it shows off: shoulders, boobs, legs, waist. A nice platter for the male gaze.
Reader, will you be shocked to hear that poor, seventeen year-old Ellie was virtually breastless? Don’t be sad for her. Turns out the things can be bought, which is exactly what she did, going on to make thousands upon thousands off the suckers who paid $6, then $10, then $12, then $20 a pop to gawk at them up close for two and half minutes. But we’ll get to that.
Anyway, there I was. Rummaging through the racks. Rackless. Wracked with worry that I wasn’t going to find anything that fit. That I was going to look like a child playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. On every hanger was an accusation. An implied criticism. You’re not enough. You might never be.
It ended up being “fine”. My drama teacher found a suitable number—black velvet bodice, green satin bubble skirt—that had the kind of sweetheart neckline that can somewhat disguise deficiencies in mammary volume. I felt comfortable enough in it, and the play was a fun, formative experience.
Also formative: that day in the basement, getting a preview of what was expected of my adult, female body. This much meat here. That much meat there. Must be shaped like this, if you want to be accepted be loved be desired wear pretty dresses.
Vignette the Second
I’m visiting my dad. It’s winter. I’m nineteen years old. I come out of my room ready to go to dinner. I’m wearing my favorite Abercrombie fair isle. It’s tight, because I’m thin and athletic and I like to show that off.
My dad glances at my chest and laughs. “Not exactly a sweater girl, are we?”
I’m thin and athletic, but I realize in that moment: that’s not good enough.
Vignette the Third
I am at the one and only Bison Witches on 4th Avenue in Tucson, Arizona. It’s a sandwich shop—the name is a play on “buy sandwiches”—and it is (at least, was) incomparable. Huge, amazing sandwiches and sourdough bread bowl soups. And a great little bar to boot.
It’s at the bar that I stand right now, beside my date, Charles Dakota Linck. I’m twenty, he’s about the same. We’ve only been out a handful of times. Couldn’t have been more than three or four. And yet, he feels comfortable enough to make this joke to me, as we are being aggressively ignored by the bartender, and I pretend to unbutton the top of my shirt to get said bartender’s attention:
“He’s gonna be like, ‘Why is this teenage boy trying to flirt with me?’”
He laughed at his own joke. I’m sure I laughed, too. Not because I thought it was funny, but so I wouldn’t seem so sensitive. It is important to not seem so sensitive when men make jokes about your body, because then they might stop picking you. And we all know knew that was a fate worse than death. But we’ll come back to that.
Anyway, this was before I boobed up. That is the only reason the joke even worked. I wore makeup, had shoulder-length hair. I was likely in a cute outfit, likely wearing jewelry. But I didn’t have tits, so any play for male attention of them would, as Cody so helpfully pointed out, fall flat.
And Cody, if you ever find this—I forgive you. If I am remembering our ages correctly, your prefrontal cortext hadn’t even fully developed yet.
Oh and congrats on your photography business. But if that’s your daughter in any of those photos? Please spare her any of your hilarious jokes about breast size.
Vignette the Fourth
The day has come. I finally did it. I got myself bewbs. I didn’t do it for the reasons you’d think, based on the above. By the time I was 21, I was pretty happy with my looks. I was fit as fuck, I was moderately pretty, I never had trouble catching cute boys. I had completely come to terms with booblessness. I genuinely did not care, because I knew I had the skinny game on lock and always would. That seemed like it would be enough after all.
But then I walked into TDs East strip club and spent three months as a cocktail waitress, making $300 a night but watching the dancers net two, three or even four times that. And I knew. I knew I could, too. And I knew it would be the ticket to incomparable freedoms and independence.
So I boobed up.
And right now, I am in the recovery room. The haze of anesthetic is just starting to lift. My chest hurts terribly but I know I will be okay. My surgeon waltzes in. She was the first female plastic surgeon in Tucson, and that is why I chose her. From our first appointment she put me entirely at ease. There was only one kind of implant I was eligible for, only one material and one shape—but the size? That was up to me.
I knew exactly what I wanted: just a full B cup. Nothing crazy. Just nice, natural Bs. She had tried to talk me into Cs. She had said there was no point in having the surgery if I didn’t want capital T tits (she did not say this, but that was the message). I stood firm. I wanted my Bs.
So she waltzes in, breezy and glamorous as ever. Asks me how I’m doing, tells me everything went perfectly, etc etc. “Oh,” she adds as if an afterthought, “I went ahead and did the 300 ccs. I just know that with your frame and height you can absolutely carry them.”
And before I can fully process what she tells me, which is that she has gone against my wishes and given me breast implants a full cup size bigger than we had agreed on, she is gone. What’s done is done. I know I won’t do a thing about it, because what’s an extra inch of flesh, when it’s the right kind in the right place?
Beauty standards are beauty standards. Surgeon knows best.
Vignette the Fifth
A month post-op. My boyfriend Marcus and I are having dinner. A crumb of something lands on my shirt. It doesn’t tumble down and off, though, because it has landed on the newly installed shelf that is my tits. I don’t notice. Marcus starts laughing and pointing. I brush the crumb off, also laughing. Nothing needs to be said. It’s funny. I realize that all my life I’ve probably been spared dozens of shirt-crumbs, because they had no incline on which to perch. It’s funny and nothing needs to be said, but something is:
“Awww, we’re still learning about our boobs aren’t we?” This in a baby talk voice. He continues, still with the baby talk, “We’re still growing into our new boobs, huh?”
There is nothing malicious in this teasing. He is trying to make me laugh, which is never a bad thing. He is a good guy, truly. One of one, as it turns out.
And yet I remember it to this day—what he said and how he said it. I remember it like it was yesterday.
And I don’t smile when I remember it. And I don’t laugh.
Vignette the Sixth
My cousin’s wedding. Beverly Hills Hotel. Quite the affair: the bride’s family is rich. And she is gorgeous. So is her brother. In fact, the bride’s brother’s looks have become something of a legend with my family—with my dad and his brothers, mainly. The brother was first spotted at some previous family event (I wasn’t there), and the comments and jokes grew and grew until the line from these middle aged, straight adult men was something like, “Even I’d fuck him.”
And they’re right, I realize, seeing him for the first time myself. He’s beautiful. Think Jared Leto in My So Called Life. But that’s about all I think, because I’m not into boys that are prettier than me, and I have no shortage of guys wanting my attention back home. I’m just here to be a dutiful cousin and to make my dad proud by looking good. Because, for some reason I do not yet understand, my looks really matter to my dad. He is forever complimenting my hair, my face, my figure—and now that I have fixed that pesky problem of booblessness, I am about perfect in his eyes. At least, I hope. I want my father to think I’m beautiful and desirable, because I’ve had 21 years of internalizing the way he looks at and speaks about women’s bodies. They are important. Mine is important. This is important.
The dress I wear to the reception is entirely inappropriate. It’s full-length, but it’s body-skimming, sheer, with a back that laces up and a neckline that showcases my recent additions. I had, in my defense, absolutely no idea it was inappropriate. I’d never been to a wedding in my life, Pinterest didn’t exist, and my mother was far too drunk all the time to advise on formal wear.
The dress—or, I guess the 21 year-old body in the dress—gets the attention of the bride’s brother. I am asked to dance. I am chatted up. I feel my father’s and my uncle’s eyes on us. I understand the significance. This, the man they have (not so) jokingly deemed an Adonis—he wants me. It will be years before I fully deconstruct the horrors of teasing all of that out, but for now all you need to know is:
I leave with the brother. He invites me to take a ride in his Porsche up the PCH, and I say yes. I leave with the brother not because I want to, because truth be told I am realizing he is kind of dumb and unfunny and bland. I leave with the brother to impress my father. To prove to him how beautiful and desirable I am. That he is right to be proud of me. That I am just as good as the women who catch his eye, who elicit his comments, who are worthy of his love.
As we slink out (everyone sees, we’re not fooling anyone), I have a vague sense that I have won something, but I don’t know what. This feeling stays with me about until morning, when I leave a hotel room that is not my own, and join my dad and uncles for breakfast where no one really knows what to say to me.
It won’t be for a long time that I realize that no, I didn’t win anything that night. I was the prize. I just had no idea that being a prize and having actual, real value—those are not one and the same.