
Ripped mercilessly from their tankinis, these former over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders are destined to hang limp forever more.
It’s like this: as of last July, I ain’t got no boobs. So today I initiate what is certain to become an annual ritual: the Spring Shelf-Bra Slice-Out. I expect to complain about it every year, too, so don’t be surprised when, next April 28, I begin a post with the words “Fuck the fucking Spring Shelf-Bra Slice-Out.”
See, there’s a catch if you’ve had a double mastectomy and have declined to saddle yourself with “reconstructed” encumbrances that serve no purpose other than to mollify other people’s anxieties and consign you to wearing drag 24/7. As I discovered last year, a spinster aunt occupying my position on the contittynuum no longer has boobs to demurely hide from prurient eyes, but there remains, astonishingly and absurdly, the strongest of expectations that she cover up the blank spaces where those old boobs used to be. This is because the world will literally explode if the following two conflicting conditions are met: (a) a female appears in public topless, and (b) a female in public fails to produce mammary tissue upon inspection.
You see the catch? It’s not exactly a Catch-22; that catch comes later. This is more of a Catch-23. If you have mammary tissue, you have to cover it up. If you dn’t have mammary tissue, you’re obliged to get some, then cover it up. If you don’t get some, you still have to cover it up.
To put it another way: you have to hide it in order to prove that you have it. If you can’t prove that you have it, you have to prove that you’re willing to fake having it.
It goes without saying that if you won’t fake having it by hiding what isn’t, you must be shunned.
Here’s why I give a rat’s ass about Catch-23: Apparently the delicate trophy wives at my sister Tidy’s club pool absolutely go apeshit whenever someone walks amongst them who expresses insufficient interest in capitulating to the femininity mandate by offensively exhibiting a couple of mastectomy scars. So in order to go swimming with the nieces — this is the whole point of today’s tirade — I have to pay homage to the concept of boobage by covering up the blank spaces where my boobs used to be.
Last year this bullshit pissed me off so much I refused to go to that pool. This year, although the bigotry still offends me in no small way, I have reluctantly decided to sacrifice another chunk of my dignity and wear some sort of tankini top thing. You know, for the sake of the nieces whose lives are so immeasurably enbiggened by my company in and around bodies of water (and for the club burgers on Tidy’s tab).
But here’s the other catch, the Catch-22: I must cover up the non-boobs, but the garment that would accomplish this while preserving what’s left of my dignity does not exist! That is, nobody manufactures a swim suit made for the top half of a human body that does not presuppose the existence of gazongas. Everything’s got cups and elastic and darts and shit. All this extra material just hangs there, flapping in the breeze, billowing in the water, making me feel like a clown. No offense to clowns, but, you know, sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t.
A Google search on ‘mastectomy swimwear’ produces results only for suits that accommodate prostheses. ‘Mastectomy swimwear’, see, doesn’t mean “no-boobs swimwear.” It means “swimwear that maintains, for the comfort of the entire community, the illusion that you never had a socially awkward deadly cancer, and could still turn dudes on if you wern’t so old and pruney.”
So today I’m cutting the shelf bras out of a few bathing suit tops that were made for women with boobs. The country club pool may succeed in getting me into a stupid-looking flappy spandex tank, but they can shove that breath-crushing elastic rib-cinch dealio up their entire ass. Fucking knobs.
And while I’m on the subject of swimwear, there can be no reason other than pornulation for any woman to put up with this crack-crawling bikini bottom crap.
Note: don’t bother writing in telling me to blow off Tidy’s club and just go au naturel at Barton Springs, where nobody gives a crap what you look like. That pool is effing cold!






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