Body Paranoia

My mother was big-breasted, enormously endowed: like one of the fertility figurines found in Middle Eastern archaeology.

I, on the other hand, take after my father.

As I was growing up, my mother used to joke about this, saying, “Are you sure you’re my daughter?”

Now, I realize that my mother was probably embarrassed by her enormous breasts and tried to use humor to come to terms with them. But a 12-year-old girl cannot make this connection and I always felt unfeminine and physically grotesque.

Then we are in A & S Department Store in the teen-age lingerie section, and I am getting my first training bra, more out of conformity than need. We don’t know about sizes--I really have nothing to fill the small cups—and my mother starts opening boxes and forcing me to try them on over my clothes. I see a father walking through the department with his daughter and, embarrassed, ask if we can’t go in a fitting room. My mother responds, “Who would be interested in you?”

Now I know she meant that pre-adolescent girls are no temptation to a grown man.

But at that moment, my self-image is defined.

For many years after that, I can imagine no man wanting to have a sexual relationship with me.

I am saved from rebelling against my family and getting pregnant by the very fact that I am so de-sexualized that I repel any boy who shows an interest in me. Relationship might involve physical closeness.

Yet my mother also praises me, telling me when we ride the train together to the city to attend the theater that a young man had been looking at me admiringly.

Or when we went shopping before I entered junior high school, she teased me about a dress I bought and how it would appeal to Ronald Cox, a very nice schoolmate who lived on our street but whose guardian/grandmother had reserved him for the priesthood. I can still remember that dress: maroon with white flowers, a scooped stand-up neck with white bric-a-brac. The buttons were in the shape of hearts.

As with so much in my childhood, I received mixed signals about men and sex.

In sixth grade I was told that I should not even be thinking about where babies come from in response to my question. It made me feel dirty and unworthy that I would have such a curiosity.

Oddly enough, my mother explained menstruation to me while we were riding uptown on the D train.

In retrospect, I believe she was so embarrassed herself about sexual matters that she chose the most impersonal place she could think of to enlighten me.

Now I am adult, have had one husband (divorced), one lover, and am currently married to a wonderful man who accepts me as I am.

I even enjoy being flat-chested and wish I never had to wear a bra. It binds and is uncomfortable.

Like so much in life, my mother was a combination of traits.