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I had been raised to own two bras: the clean one and the dirty one. I didn't believe in false advertising, faking orgasms, or that the Republicans would ever win. Thus, I boycotted padded bras. I was perfectly okay — just fine, dammit — with my small but perky endowment. My breasts may have been average, but my intellect and youthful enthusiasm could fill a double-D. True, bartenders ignored my orders while handing my busty friend Tabitha free shots. I didn't even enter the "best chest" contest like my pal Stacey did. (And won. At a gay bar). And I certainly couldn't hold a bottle of Jack Daniels and pour it into a shot glass — using no hands but just one, voluptuous, earth-goddess breast — like my friend Alba. Men stared at my eyes when they met me.



Then I spent a summer working at Victoria's Secret. I ate lunch every day under a

billboard-sized poster of Stephanie Seymour, lounging on breasts the size of pillows, which were resting on actual pillows. It only seemed sensible to put the employee discount to use. I began with a slightly padded bra — just a little extra foam to round out the edges. Then a regular padded bra went on sale. It was a short, slippery slope to the ultimate in padded, push-up bras, with cups thick enough to stop bullets and enough underwire for MacGyver to build an impromptu bridge. If I took a deep breath, I popped buttons.



Now I knew why they were called miracle bras. I admired my new assets as much as the guys I met did. It still seemed inconceivable that I had real, live cleavage. Not just boobs — cleavage. Paris Hilton and her new push-up bra know what I'm talking about. My breasts rose in little hillocks above my tank top; like Nerf balls, you could push down on them and they'd bounce right back. I felt like the best of all French whores in Hollywood corsets. There was a perfect dovetail crease where my breasts now actually touched. I could, like Molly Ringwald, stick a tube of lipstick in there and apply it, sans hands.



I bought a rainbow assortment of low-cut shirts, and flaunted my newfound girlfriends in every bar, park and concert venue in town. It wasn't long before I moved from enjoying my own cleavage (it caught cookie crumbs that fell from my mouth!) to wanting to share the wealth.



I was just out of college and at a "sexual

superheroes" costume party. I didn't know exactly what this meant — nor did anyone else there — but the apartment was filled with men in pleather nurses' outfits, women dressed as Bond girls, a guy in a tux with a green Afro wig sprouting from his open fly and anal lube next to the Cheerios in the kitchen. All of this was being hosted in the Midwestern suburbs by an amiable window salesman who would later embrace his Muslim roots and marry a virgin.



One soulful-eyed dude stood out from the leather-and-bondaged crowd. He sported the only humorous costume in the place: his nametag read "Marv Albert." Before I knew it we were upstairs in a stranger's bedroom, and I realized I'd never thought further than, "Look, I have boobs!" Now the lights were off and, like a bad toupee or a third nipple, the truth was about to be revealed.


Intellectually, I was fine with my breasts. I didn't expect him to run screaming from the room when he realized that on the spectrum of boobage, I was closer to a Cameron Diaz than a Pam Anderson. He was a young drunk guy, after all. But still, I couldn't bear the imagined disappointment. The bra — and then his lovely face — would fall in slow motion. He was expecting melons; all I could offer were plums.
"Stop." I pushed him off me. "I have to tell you something." Alcohol fumes wavered between us. I decided that revealing the truth — like ripping off a Band-Aid — was best done quickly and with brute force.
"These [deep breath] are not my real breasts. I [sigh] am wearing [ohgod] a Push. Up. Bra."



I studied his face for signs of disgust, or outrage at my cruel deceit.


He shrugged. Mumbled okay. And removed my bra. I lay back and what joy! What unfettered freedom! He was, in fact, burrowing into my normal-sized breasts like he was a prairie dog and I was the Great Plains. As women can do, even young drunk women, I was half-there enjoying his attentions, and half-musing on how silly I'd been. All this fuss over a little underwire and foam? I wasn't selling out; I wasn't lying; I could still be a feminist —