Having been ever-so-gracious enough to allow my boyfriend to use the shower before I did on the last Sunday morning of our winter break spent at my parents’ house, I had 11 minutes to get ready to go before we left for church as a family. With no time to spare, I invested those 11 minutes in just the most basic practices for personal hygiene:
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Two-minute shower consisting only of body wash
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Dousing unwashed hair in curl cream
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Quick dab of mascara
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Dirty t-shirt, clean panties, old leggings
And I’m ready to bound down the stairs from the bathroom to the front door, racing to locate my most reliable pair of white keds, before I’m stopped by my mother. Somehow, in the approximately 4 months since I lived at home, I had forgotten the key command this woman loves to inflict upon me.
“PUT A BRA ON,” she screams, awakening my father from his camouflage-printed La-Z Boy recliner, and calling him into this battle.
“No? Can we please leave,” I plead; second ked still nowhere to be found.
The snippet of sass in my negative answer was enough to ignite the everlasting flame of conservative ideals in this 52-year-ol woman, and she was about to turn arsonist, with me as her major victim.
“EXCUSE ME?” she bellows, her voice ringing in the ears of our 4-bedroom middle-class home in Buffalo, New York. “You put a bra on before you leave this house. I will not have my daughter be a cause of a near occasion of sin.”
But I was comfortable, stubborn, and we were all running late. I replied with some angsty teenager vs overbearing mother stereotypical retort that could’ve easily been formatted into some sort of strong feminist speech about my freedom of appearance if my mind were working in a manner beyond that of a rushed daughter attempting to wriggle out from under my parents’ thumbs for a hot second.
“Would you dress like that to meet the pope?” my father chimed in, still from the comfort of his invisible recliner.
“Yes, I would. Because it’s comfortable.”
“Oh, would you?! Then the sin is on both of you!” my mother responded, enveloping her husband’s argument.
“If the pope decides to look at my perfectly natural body with the sin of lust on his mind, then the sin is completely on him! I shouldn’t be considered sinful for being fully clothed and comfortable!” I yelped, accepting the desperate and immature tone that always overcomes me when I argue with my parents.
I decided to tune out of the discussion following that final point, allowing their rebuttals to blend into one solid, unintelligible noise as I stomped back upstairs to put on the chest-restricting, back-pain producing, boob cage. There was no convincing them.
In the same way, there is no convincing the general public. Surrounded by the freedom of my university campus, my outfits are still restricted by how socially appropriate they are, forcing me to decide whether each top “requires” a bra or not. As a B-cup, I fully understand my privilege of not having been well-endowed, never having to deal with the fear of spillage or any real sagging. Simply because of this advantage, I am able to allocate days in which I can go bra-less. However, I still continuously have to address the issue of a visible nipple outline.
My mom wasn’t worried about me having a Janet Jackson moment in the middle of Sunday Mass, she simply thought the possibility of two circular protuberances appearing through the front of my gray turtleneck was absolutely immoral and undoubtedly offensive.
While I could argue that I have a problem with the biology and anatomy of humans in general. Or that I could call beef on sight with whatever higher power decided nipples should make themselves known to the world the second the smallest cool breeze brushes across them. My real issue is with society.Understandably, nipples are sexualized. They become erect not only when met with a sharp drop in temperature, but when aroused. But why the f**k should mine be more sexualized than men’s nipples? No one calls for a trip to the confessional the moment a man walks outdoors and his own round pepperoni nipples are suddenly attainable to any eye with working depth perception and the ability to focus long enough on a hideous thin golf shirt.
I feel trapped, I feel caged, I feel confined, I feel uncomfortable when I have to wear a bra for more than a few hours. If there was no need to blur the female nipple, I would never have to incarcerate my boobs again.
This is not only a long, drawn-out complaint of mine, but a call to action. Erase the gender line. Destroy the patriarchy. And please, Free the Nipple.