Itty Bitty Titties (part three)
Diving in (topless) to body reclamation
This is part three in a series about tapping into erotic energy. (Here’s part one and part two.)
Last week, I drove to the beach with a friend for a celebration of the new moon and coinciding solar eclipse. We arrived early and walked slowly across the sand, taking in the vast ocean before us. I’d just returned from visiting family in Michigan and hadn’t seen her in more than a month. Shimmering in golden hour light, reflecting the blonde-tinged clouds overhead, she was almost too pretty to look at.
“Ayyyy… tengo que nadar!!” (I have to swim!!) I told my friend. Good thing I had my suit!
But when I looked down, I saw the outline of my bare tits under my dress. Shit! In a rush to leave the house, I’d grabbed only my bikini bottoms, assuming I was still wearing the top.
Well, I could at least go say hiiii… I ran to the shore.
The Lake Michigan waters I’d submerged in just a couple days before were bracing; wake up, they told me. The waters of the Caribbean this time of year are the opposite, like, chica, traanqui. Relaaaax.
Her warmth rushed up to my shins and I melted. She called me closer and I lifted up my dress to go deeper… but it wasn’t enough — I needed to be enveloped all the way.
I thought about asking a friend if she had an extra top in her car. I considered swimming in my dress. And then a little voice said, what if I just went in topless? There weren’t too many people around, no kids, a few men (topless, of course)… I could make the trip in and out super fast, covering my chest with my hands.
I got that giddy feeling that comes when I’m about to rebel. When I’m about to say Fuck That to shame and what’s considered acceptable and live on my own terms.
Acts of liberation can be so simple.
I stripped right at the water’s edge and ran in holding my bouncing breasts. I dove into the swells over and over like a joyous dolphin. I broke the surface boobs-first. I planted my palms in the sand for a handstand, stretching my chest. I held my breath, joined my legs and did my mermaid swim, a ripple running through my body. I floated and basked.
Our reunion was ecstatic, holy — in part because I felt particularly free in that moment, my boobs fully communing with the water. Like all of me was natural, belonging to nature, divine.
“Te metiste asi?!” (“You got in like that?”), my friend asked, smiling as I settled on my towel in the circle.
“Siiii,” I grinned. I told him I knew I would have deprived myself of the glorious experience had I not been learning to love my small tits (and been writing about it for this post that very morning).
Because while, yes, the cultural norms that say only half the population is allowed to walk around without shirts gave me pause, the stronger force to overcome was my own shame around this part of my body. Even if I’m totally about Freeing the Nipple theoretically, I’ve had to release a lot of oppressive beliefs in order to start actually freeing my own nipples. Accepting and loving my boobs as they are.
A major step on the journey came (where else?) at the Pussy Empowered Retreat I’ve been writing about.
Midway through the week, we were gathered around the pool practicing choreography for a scene in the music video we’d film in a couple days. Our directress Alyssa shared her vision for another scene: a close up shot of a group of us massaging our breasts with coconut oil. “No nips,” she promised. She asked who would be up for it.
I said yes without thinking. But lying in bed that night, I got all nervous about my small tits being captured up-close on camera. The hand-to-boob ratio is not going to be very sexy, I thought. My big hands (I can just about palm a basketball) would make my boobs look even smaller. Fuck.
My small-boob-self-consciousness had already been creeping out that week. Because in this group of empowered pussies, whenever there was an opportunity to be naked, we were naked. Which was liberating… and made me well aware of the insecurities I still carried about my body — especially my small chest.
I think this one is rooted in early middle school, around the time one of my best friends gave me the catchy-cruel nickname “Flat Kat,” and when I started noticing the Big Deal everyone made about Big Boobs.
There were the implants springing from the covers of People and US Weekly magazines on my dad’s nightstand. JT and Janet’s Nipplegate at the super bowl halftime show and media’s obsession with it over the following months (years?). The CD cover of comedians ‘Bob & Tom’s Greatest Tits’ in my dad’s car.
…to name just a few of the big busts burned into my childhood brain.
I was a boney 11-year-old still a couple years from full-on puberty, internalizing images I’d continue to measure myself against (and calculate that I was inadequate) for decades.
At many points in my youth, I simply didn’t think I was or would ever be desirable without the fat deposits that protect my mammary glands growing larger. Even more damagingly, I felt I wasn’t womanly or feminine enough, wondered if something was wrong with me, if I’d ever be able to breast feed. Meanwhile, my peers who developed bigger chests sooner were inappropriately sexualized and visually (sometimes physically) accosted by men several times their age.
Women and girls everywhere have wished for boobs that were bigger or smaller or more symmetrical, perkier/rounder/bouncier… we could go on. A 2020 study found that 70% of women across 40 countries were dissatisfied with their breast size; of the 18,541 women surveyed, nearly half wanted bigger breasts and 23% wished for smaller.
The ubiquitous “perfect” cleavage standard many of us long for has been manufactured and sexualized by marketers to SELL — everything from beer and cars to toothbrushes and garden manure. The most important demographic to appeal to is that with the most spending power, historically elite groups of straight men.
Though of course people are attracted to a wildly varying range of body parts, shapes and sizes — and true desire is about way more than looks — our capitalist system exploits shallow, often-subconscious drives while distorting our collective sense of what is desirable. Many of us are left cutting open our bodies and stuffing them with foreign objects to try to measure up and/or continually punishing ourselves for failing to.
Most of us women being at war with our bodies (of course the boobs are just the tit of the iceberg) on a daily basis is nothing short of a global crisis. Directing negative thoughts towards ourselves disarms us of our own power. It’s a self-defeating distraction that keeps us small. With parts of us hiding, ashamed, tense… we’re in a constant, partial shut-down mode.
To be at the retreat in a loving, supportive group of women and still feel this capitalist male gaze saying my small boobs were not attractive, even something to be ashamed of, made me realize yet again just how deeply internalized this shit is.
But that’s exactly why I was there. For the antidote.
During our dance warm ups, Alyssa invited us to use our hands as extensions of our hearts. We loved up on our whole bodies with the brushes of our fingertips, our own squeezes. She urged us to feel our breasts. “We’re taught that our breasts are for others,” she often says, the nourishment of children, the gratification of men/sexual partners. But we can enjoy our own bodies, release oxytocin through our nipples and have that pleasure all for ourselves.
Being in closer touch with their sensation and function has led me towards a fuller acceptance of my breasts. Which puts me a place where I can simply be, frees up that energy to focus on sometime more important, or simply feel more joy.
And when I can love them? It’s a powerful source of energy, fuel to be my most empowered self, to show up in the world not only unapologetically, but radiantly. To dive in topless.
In the end I decided I did want to be a part of this scene in the music video, wanted to share my moment of self-love and reclamation.
So I held out my hands for the coconut oil and I kneeled on the shore, embracing this soft, sensitive part of me. And I hoped other members of the itty bitty titty committee would feel seen.
Yo quiero sentir… la brisa…
(I want to feel the breeze…)
encima de mis tetas
(on my tits)
Alyssa sings during this scene of the video.
Fuck yes. Let them be free, let them beautiful — all shapes and sizes. Let them be for us.
Stay tuned for part four — the last in this series (I think!)
