They're My Girls

Last night I had some time to kill after I left the gym and before I went to Alicia's to watch America's Next Top Model, so I went to the H&M in Back Bay. This one is much nicer than the one downtown, and at 6:30 it was nearly deserted. I strolled through the racks without one pushy tourist or college student in my way.

I'm broke, as usual, but I am in need of some tank tops. The ones I have are unraveling, grease-stained, or make my boobs look weirdly flat. I figured if I needed something cheap, H&M was the place to go. They had some cute low-v-cut tanks, a cute tank with a little ruffly trim on the top, and a polka-dot tank top. I looked them over, and grabbed a small and medium of each. I ventured into the dressing room, dreading what awaited me.

Throughout my adult years, I've had a struggle with shirt sizes. Even before I lost weight, I needed one size shirt for my boobs and another for my waist. Since I've been working out, I figured I might be able to carry off a small instead of a medium, especially if I'm trying to keep the girls from popping out. I tried on a small v-cut tank in green. I did a little shimmy in the mirror. My stomach didn't look too bad. My boobs, however, looked awful. Somehow, my B-cups are saggy.

How is this possible? How? For the love of God, if I don't wear a push-up bra, you'll pass right by without noticing my boobs. I see the models in the J. Crew catalog with their little pert boobs in white shirts with no bras and, thanks to the miracle of Photoshop, not even the shadow of a nipple. Yet there I was in a dimly lit dressing room looking like gravity had pulled on my boobs with a greater intensity than the rest of my body. I do push-ups and the weight machines that should be firming up the muscles under my boobs to make them perky, but I think it just made them smaller. Somehow.

It progressed the same with the other shirts. I almost bought the polka-dotted one because I could wear a bra with it and the blue ruffled one to try with a strapless bra, but I put them back. If it's ninety degrees and humid, I'm not going to want to mess with a strapless bra worming its way between my ribs as I move. If you see a girl walking around with just a bra on, that's probably me. I'll be sure it's a push-up bra so you don't pass me by.