The birds and the bees…and boobs.

September 10, 2023

One day in seventh grade a boy boldly approached me and asked me why I didn’t have boobs yet. “Excuse me?” I said, holding back equal parts rage and tears. “You’re still so flat. You’re so flat that you make the walls jealous.” He and his buddies chuckled together and walked away leaving me to wonder what the hell he was talking about.

I was not particularly aware of my body at that time. I did notice that some girls in the changing room during gym class had started turning away when getting into their athletic wear. Half taking off their current shirts while maneuvering magically to get their gym clothes on without any skin showing. I caught glimpses of sports and training bras in the process and wondered what everyone was so afraid of showing.

Was I supposed to hide as well? Everyone else seemed to be shrinking into themselves physically; curving their shoulders inward to hide changes in their upper bodies. I noticed the boys starting to point and giggle when those more developed girls ran or jumped.

I had absolutely no interest in the opinions of boys at all. I was honestly too busy on our family’s farm and with sports and music, and as far as I was concerned boobs seemed like a complete inconvenience.

I had scrawny legs, frizzy curly hair, a set of braces and headgear that I wore publicly (shudder), and I liked cargo shorts and t-shirts from Northern Reflections. #Canada. A lot of girls in my class would spend time talking about the new brand of Guess jeans or Esprit sweatshirts they were getting and I literally had no idea what they were talking about. “Why would you pay more for a pair of pants with a triangle on the butt pocket?” My Dad asked rhetorically one day. “Just find a patch and have your mother sew it on the pair of jeans you already have.” Seemed logical to me.

We were a family of 5. My Dad worked as a teacher for his entire career and my Mom worked to raise 3 highly gifted children, managed her own business for a time, and kept everything running smoothly at home, which I see now was not only a full time job, it was her life’s work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was a one income household and it was obvious that money would be going toward the mortgage, piano lessons, and club volleyball rather than a $80 Cotton Ginny sweatshirt.

Being 12 years old is a confusing time for anyone. I look back and try to find empathy for the boys I grew up with. It couldn’t have been easy to have raging hormones and extreme body changes happening to them so publicly all while trying to exude some kind of expected machismo and toughness. “Oh my goodness look at how tall Steven got over the summer,” my Mom said one day after school. “It’s always such an awkward time for boys. Look at him, he hasn’t grown into his own ears yet.”

Sure enough I took a closer look and as always, she was right. Gangly and disproportionate, his limbs had sprouted and he had indeed grown about a foot over the summer. He still had the face of a boy and his ears were enormous and waving in the breeze waiting for his face to catch up. Completely bespeckled with acne, he lumbered along like a drunk baby giraffe, trying desperately to coordinate his limbs to appear cool and casual. Failing loudly.

Everyone had braces. Or a retainer. Or both. Everyone smelled a little off and suddenly boys were rude and girls were secretive. If you didn’t squarely fit into one of these categories you were a loner. A loser. A nerd. A dork. These people probably own multi-million dollar companies now and I hope the jerks who used to make fun of them now rely on them to make a living. I was somewhere in the middle of nerd and cool. Somehow I had a few “cool” friends but I also liked the nerds. I was in music. I played sports. I was friendly and smart and was not intimidated by bullies. I was very lucky.

One day we were divided into two groups: one for the girls and one for the boys. The boys went off to a private room once a week to talk about who knows what. The girls went to a small room and sat around a circular table while the kindest human on earth, Mrs. Bailey, who explained a little about how our bodies were changing.

Now, I grew up on a farm and was raised by two teachers. I have a Dad who taught his two daughters everything he taught my brother. How to build things, take care of animals, do farm chores. He taught us how to milk cows, slaughter turkeys for Thanksgiving, and how identify different birds in our backyard. My mom was the kind of woman who never minced words when it came to body awareness or teaching us all about the birds and the bees.

My sibling once asked my Mom loudly and publicly in a grocery store, “Mom, what’s masturbation?” She calmly and clearly defined it without any shame or guilt, ignoring the sideways glances from the shoppers around us. “Mom what exactly is that cow doing to that other cow? Why is he on her back like that and what’s that thing hanging down from his stomach.” She flinched NEVER. Clearly explaining and defining all the things around us without so much as a giggle.

In our girls group we went over the basics, most of which I already knew. Wear deodorant, don’t make fun of the boys when they forget deodorant, you might need a bra soon, this is a tampon, this is a pad, and don’t even think about touching boys because you will certainly get a terrible disease, get pregnant, and then you will die. I may be misremembering some of those details, but in the early 90’s that was the general message from adults.

I looked around at some of the other girls in our girl group. Most of them had smooth, shaved legs, and a ton of hairspray holding half of their bangs up in a feathered, gravity-defying wave. I looked down at my own legs covered in what looked like peach fuzz and considered cutting my own hair that night to imitate their dos. For curly girls out there? Just don’t.

Some of the girls asked what to do about the cramps they got each month and I feigned empathy and genuine concern. It would be another 5 years before I got my period but I definitely pretended that I got it when all my other friends confessed that they had gotten theirs.

I grew boobs in the span of one weekend when I was 15. I went to an overnight 4-H fair where we showed the city folk how to properly take care of animals. We were in the barns before 5am and worked all day tending to the tourists and our beloved pigs and cows.

Maybe it was the manure I was standing in for 3 days but I went to that fair flat as a board, and when my Mom showed up on Sunday she found me in a soaking wet white t-shirt, hosing out the stalls, surrounded by a gangly group of gawking boys. “What?” I said with a blank look on my face. “They’ve just been standing there staring at me all day. I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

“I know why they’re staring,” my Mom whispered, “we’re going to the mall. Now.” Suddenly, everything in my life changed. Boys stared, grown men would stop and talk at me, and I had a bunch of different boyfriends at any given moment, all from different schools. Gotta keep ‘em separated, am I right? The boys and the boobs, that is.

Nothing about the real me had actually changed. I still ran cross country. I still taped Sarah McLachlan songs from the radio and transcribed them at the piano. I still really liked cargo shorts and Northern Reflections t-shirts. My body had suddenly become visible, though. The male gaze had set their sights on my upper balcony and for better and sometimes for worse, it has shifted how I am perceived in this world.

The same boy who teased me about my flat chest now pointed and laughed as I walked out of school saying, “Wow, you’re really filling out that shirt now, Jones.” I turned around and kicked him hard and squarely in the crotch. Standing over him I said, “Comment on my body one more time and I’ll push you into traffic and we’ll see who is flat then.”

I know, I know…violence is not the answer but it sure felt good to get that one off my chest.