Am I #blessed?: The reality of being a short girl with a large chest
Graphics by Isabelle Hauf-Pison
I’m sitting outside my dorm with some friends, enjoying the nice weather in one of my favorite Urban Outfitters finds, when with the slight movement of my left shoulder, my dress’s spaghetti strap decides it no longer wants to hold up my chest. So, there I am, one broken dress strap later, wondering when mainstream brands will work to fit my boobs, instead of trying to fit my boobs into mainstream brands.
Women everywhere constantly try to fit themselves into a mold. We attempt to find bras that don’t feel like torture devices. We walk into stores and perform one-woman Wiggles shows in the dressing room while trying to slide into skinny jeans. We’re told to be sexy, classy and thin all at once.
I am 5 feet tall with double-Ds. You don’t see women like me in Vogue. Sports Illustrated maybe, if I was taller. Many people would kill to have a large chest because of societal beauty standards. But if I had a dollar for every time I walked into a store and struggled to find a shirt that fit me, I’d be on a yacht with the prince of Monaco.
Every time I walk into the mall it’s like I’m confronting a double-edged sword. I vividly remember the day I got measured for the first time when I was 12, and my mom made the employee measure me again because she refused to believe I was anything larger than a B cup like her.
My mother is more optimistic than me. She used to list off all of her friends that got breast implants back in Venezuela. Like many other Latinx people, she grew up idolizing the standard of the sexy Latina woman with big breasts. “You are blessed, mija,” she would say.
After countless trips to the mall and online impulse sprees, I started feeling like having a large chest didn’t make me #blessed. Maybe if I was 5’10.
That’s my problem. If I buy a shirt larger than a small, it’s baggy, and not the kind of baggy where you think, “She looks effortlessly cool.” I look like I pulled a shirt from the closet of my distant relative’s younger son.
You might be wondering why I don’t just wear a size small. Believe me I’ve tried. I’m not one to complain about most Pacsun or Brandy Melville clothes being too small for me — although, that one-size-fits-all thing is a conversation in its own right. But I can’t buy shirts at either store because I can’t fit my chest into them!
The fashion industry assumes that if you have a large chest, you must also wear a size large. Whether in real life or on Instagram, I see tall, thin and beautiful girls with a smaller chest who look amazing in the Brandy shirt I saw on the rack. And for a long time, not a day went by where I didn’t wish my breasts would shrink overnight so I could look the same.
My best friend happens to be one of these small-chested women. Our bodies are shaped very differently, and I couldn’t wrap my head around this when I went shopping with her.
We once walked into a Zara and picked out a cute, sheer top with a cowl neckline to try on. It fit her perfectly. But the small size squeezed my chest, and the medium made me look like a tent.
For a long time, I didn’t really consider that she sometimes feels insecure about how shirts fit her. She tells me how having a smaller chest can feel like something is missing in your shirt, or like she doesn’t look as feminine. But the Kendall Jenners and Kaia Gerbers of the world have convinced me that the root of all my problems is my chest.
The internet isn’t really that much help. This Bustle article and that Petite Dressing article ask me and other short but large-chested girls to reject prevalent beauty trends because they don’t work for us. I admit that I’m a Cosmo reader, but I can’t forgive the hilarious irony of their “real outfits for your large chest” recommendations, almost entirely modeled by small-chested women.
I used to pray that I’d find a top that would make me look in the mirror and think, “I look as beautiful as the smaller-chested people I know.” I’d love to tell you that I don’t still think that sometimes. But I realized the fashion industry is not going to alter its beauty standards anytime soon.
I realized I do have control over my mindset. I am sick of men telling me how hot they think my breasts are while simultaneously being rejected by my favorite Urban Outfitters dresses and Brandy Melville shirts.
If short and large-chested women like me keep believing that we’re incredibly powerful, then the world will take notice. I started accepting the parts of my body I used to resent. Rather than reading endless articles or advice columns on what should theoretically look nice or what trends to ignore, I’ve started embracing the fashion that I love because it feels like me.
I’m not going to preach about what you should and shouldn’t wear, and it feels unhelpful to wax poetic on what the fashion industry can and should change. But I will look at myself, every day, wearing the trends that I chose, and the outfits that I love, and feel proud and #blessed. Will I still be pissed every time my dress strap breaks because of my chest? Of course. But do I have the power to instead remember how amazing I felt in that same dress? Hell yeah.