A-Sexy B is for Bra
So for a long time I lived a lie. I thought I was a 34B and happily went around telling people that I was the average size for women. I don’t know why this was so important but I think too much Just 17, Mizz, More and girl’s only schools had made me competitive. Oh, I never wanted to be big. I played sport, wouldn’t they just get in the way? Besides, I had a bottom to contend with in a world where bottoms were NOT fashionable. Yes my precious, this was BJL (Before J-Lo)
Then, out shopping with a male friend I was harassed by a woman into getting m
easured in a department store. Maybe they were running a promotion but the woman was insistent. This was in South Africa at a time where older women were allowed not to attend customer’s service training. They all think they’re your aunties so I wasn’t about to get into one with her. I politely told her that I knew my bra size and didn’t need her services but she wasn’t having it. My friend looked on as this woman manhandled me on the shop floor with a tape measure, cold hands and a steely determination. I finally gave up the desire to wrestle. She had at least 40 kgs on me.
Then she shouted across the shop floor “Patience, bring me out the 32s rack from the back!” What the F*ck?
First of all I was reeling from this devastating news? I wasn’t the teen magazine holy grail 
of a 34? (Now of course I’m ecstatic at this news.) And secondly, the 32s weren’t even good enough to make it onto the shop floor? What were they trying to say to women like me by keeping then in the back? That we didn’t measure up. And shouldn’t they take you to somewhere private before breaking this news to you? Not shout it across the shop floor?
As my so called friend laughed on I should have suggested we go take a turn in the men’s department and get his inside leg measured. But instead my whole body image shifted as I realised…I would never make page 3 of any national newspaper. Unless of course they start doing a bottom page but logically that would have to be near the back of the paper. Like, maybe page 43. Not quite the same ring to it does it?
Hmmmm, maybe I should give Maxim a call?
© Chelsea Black A-Sexy
