Boobless and Pissed

Good Morning.  It is Katherine today.  Don't be confused.

It's just after five in the morning and I've been up for a while.  I've scanned some documents for a meeting I have tomorrow.  I've put in a load of laundry.  I've looked for the rain/wind jackets we've lost for a bit.  A minute ago I heard the coffee maker ding its "I am done" noise so I got a cup of coffee, sat down and turned on the TV.  There was Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot and her boobs were everywhere.  That was it.  Time to get some shit off my chest.

I've had a mastectomy and no reconstruction.  The only approach would have been to remove the lat muscles and turn them into boobs.  I would have to forgo tennis, kayaking, and anything that really relied on back muscles though.  I didn't do the surgery and when naked I'm a pretty gnarly looking girl.  

I got the fake boobs right after the surgery, but they are heavy and itch and I've only worn them a couple of times when I first got them.  The whole thought of going to a drawer and pulling out boobs to wear was tough.  I toyed with getting multiple sizes and C. Fite even knit me some various sizes (one of the coolest gifts I think I have ever received--I still have them).  I thought it would be fun to confuse people and show up with different boobs for different occasions.  The thought was easier than the reality.

In general, my boobless life is just like most flat-chested girls if any are left who haven't had surgery to get bigger and better boobs.  Most folks who don't know me would have no clue what scars and lack of symmetry lie beneath my wardrobe.  Jim adores me and how I look with and without coverage and my friends put up with my occasional boob melancholy.  Mostly I am just a normal flat-chested girl.

There are times, however, when the world's focus on boobs does me in and I just get pissed.  This is one of those times.

This particular boob mood started because there are three weddings coming up and I wanted something new to wear to them.  Seemed reasonable.  I wanted a pretty new dress.

I haven't bought a dress since December of 2007.  I'd bought the closest thing to a movie star dress I have ever owned.   It was rose colored and long, the back was bare and the front was low cut.  I loved how I looked in it.  It was for Franny's wedding.   Two weeks later I was diagnosed with breast cancer, the mastectomy decision was made, the dress returned, and I wore a dress from my past to Franny's beautiful wedding.  Though I've purchased a number of sun dresses for summer treks to the grocery store, I haven't bought a real live pretty dress since the rose dress I couldn't keep for the wedding.  

I started looking for my new dress (online and in stores) in early May.  I hadn't shopped for a dress since the boobs were gone and hadn't realized what a challenge it could be.  I started looking at dresses--on TV, on the streets, wherever.  I noticed a couple of things.  One--real women that I see in the real world hardly ever wear dresses at all.  Maybe there just aren't enough weddings.  Two--dresses seem to be designed for the sole purpose of boob awareness.    

I started analyzing dresses on the women I saw on TV.  Try looking at the NFL Network female personalities.  Try looking at the local CBS weather lady.  Try looking at the Fox News women.  TV women are all about boobs.  Boobs are pointing at me all the time.  

Trying on dresses was awful.  I don't think I even told Jim about it.  I stopped at Nordstrom's on my way home from a meeting and tried on three dresses I thought might work.  I forgot about darts.  I've learned never to buy a shirt or sweater with darts.  Darts make the fabric point outward and without anything inside the dress to fill in the pointy part, the dress doesn't work.  Because of my overall size, the empty points can get pretty big and look ridiculous.  I also foolishly forgot that boobs hold up strapless dresses--even strapless dresses without sequins.  I forgot that shirtwaist dresses look nifty because the belt in the middle is creating the hourglass image between hips and boobs and without the boobs on top, I just looked like an eleven year old anticipating puberty.  Nothing pretty about it.

I gave up on the store approach.  There was just too much disappointment.  I went online and looked at Eileen Fisher dresses.  I buy only Eileen Fisher sweaters.  They work with my chest.  That's the only reason I buy them.   I got lucky and found a dress I really liked and thought would work and was so excited that I bought it in two colors.  

When the dresses arrived, I had my usual glee at the package and then disappointment when I realized that there was just too much dress at the top.  Rather than returning them, I decided to have them altered.  When I went in for the fitting, the lovely Asian seamstress told me I would ruin some of the symmetry of the dress by trimming it down and it would be better if I wore "artificial breasts."  I told her to fix my dresses.  Symmetry is no more.

My dresses are "fixed" and I like them.  It cost about $50 a dress for the alterations.  If I had "breast pockets" put into them, the cost would be tax deductible.  The tax people are good about alterations that accommodate new and/or fake boobs.  If you don't go that route though, and you need an alteration for lack of boobs, it is not deductible.  I learned that when I had swim suits altered a couple of years ago.  Funny how the world works sometimes.  

It was the dress business that brought on this recent boob irritation, but small things have kept my fire lit.  I have no problems with Caitlyn Jenner.  It is the media's fascination with her figure, her boobs,  and her looks that drive me crazy.  When she was Bruce, she had a brain and an athletic history of note.  Now she is only about her looks.  Jon Stewart said this better on The Daily Show.  

I sat down with my coffee this morning to think about my day.  Could it be dry enough to get my last plants in the ground and some more weeds out of the ground?  Could the Rockies manage to win again?  Could I attack the mess in the office I've created with finishing my Metro paperwork?  Could I pick up a pen and try to draw a bit again?  Then I turned on the TV and there was Marilyn singing and cooing at me.

Marilyn was sewn into a transparent dress with appropriate sequin patches to cover nipples and such and then Marilyn bent over and sang and cooed, "I want to be loved by you, just you, and nobody else but you," and her boobs said a big hello to the camera and me.  That was it.

Marilyn Monroe is dead and a lot of folks think she is dead because she wanted to be more than her boobs.  I understand the feeling.