A Few Words About
I have to begin with a few words about androgyny.
Breasts In grammar school, in the fifth and sixth grades, we
By Nora Ephron
were all tyrannized by a rigid set of rules that
supposedly determined whether we were boys or
girls. The episode in Huckleberry Finn where Huck is
INTRODUCTION
disguised as a girl and gives himself away by the
IN AN EDUCATIONAL FILM VOICE:
PUBERTY: OK, so it's a funny word - but what is way he threads a needle and catches a ball-that
puberty, anyway? Puberty (say: pyoo-ber-tee) is the kind of thing. We learned that the way you sat,
name for the time when your body begins to develop
and change as you become an adult. We're talking crossed your legs, held a cigarette, and looked at
about stuff like girls developing breasts and boys your nails-the way you did these things instinctively
starting to look more like men. During puberty, your
body will grow faster than at any other time in your was absolute proof of your sex. Now obviously most
life, except for when you were a baby. children did not take this literally, but I did. I thought
It helps to know about the changes that puberty causes that just one slip, just one incorrect cross of my legs
before they happen. That way, you know what to or flick of an imaginary cigarette ash would turn me
expect. It's also important to remember that everybody
goes through these changes. No matter where you live, from whatever I was into the other thing; that would
whether you're a boy or a girl, whether you like vanilla be all it took, really. Even though I was outwardly a
or double-fudge-chunk ice cream, you will experience
girl and had many of the trappings generally
them. No two people are exactly alike, but one thing
everyone has in common is that we all go through associated with girldom-a girl's name, for example,
puberty.
and dresses, my own telephone, an autograph book-
And now . . . . A Few Words About Breasts by Nora I spent the early years of my adolescence absolutely
Ephron
certain that I might at any point gum it up. I did not
feel at all like a girl. I was boyish. I was athletic,
ambitious, outspoken, competitive, noisy,
rambunctious. I had scabs on my knees and my her fourth child, and then only because her
socks slid into my loafers and I could throw a gynecologist made her. It was incomprehensible to
football. I wanted desperately not to be that way, me that anyone could ever be proud of something
not to be a mixture of both things, but instead just like that. It was the 1950s, for God's sake. Jane
one, a girl, a definite indisputable girl. As soft and as Russell. Cashmere sweaters. Couldn't my mother
pink as a nursery. And nothing would do that for me, see that? "I am too old to wear an undershirt."
I felt, but breasts. Screaming. Weeping. Shouting. "Then don't wear an
undershirt," said my mother. "But I want to buy a
I was about six months younger than everyone else bra." "What for?"
in my class, and so for about six months after it
began, for six months after my friends had begun to I suppose that for most girls, breasts, brassieres,
develop (that was the word we used, develop), I was that entire thing, has more trauma, more to do with
not particularly worried. I would sit in the bathtub the coming of adolescence, with becoming a
and look down at my breasts and know that any day woman, than anything else. Certainly more than
now, any second now, they would start growing like getting your period, although that, too, was
everyone else's. They didn't. "I want to buy a bra," I traumatic, symbolic. But you could see breasts; they
said to my mother one night. "What for?" she said. were there; they were visible. Whereas a girl could
My mother was really hateful about bras, and by the claim to have her period for months before she
time my third sister had gotten to the point where actually got it and nobody would ever know the
she was ready to want one, my mother had worked difference. Which is exactly what I did. All you had
the whole business into a comedy routine. "Why not to do was make a great fuss over having enough
use a Band-Aid instead?" she would say. It was a nickels for the Kotex machine and walk around
source of great pride to my mother that she had clutching your stomach and moaning for three to
never even had to wear a brassiere until she had five days a month about The Curse and you could
convince anybody. There is a school of thought mean to me what it meant to her. Her little girl, her
somewhere in the women's lib/women's firstborn, had finally become a woman. That was
mag/gynecology establishment that claims that what she was crying about. My reaction to the
menstrual cramps are purely psychological, and I event, however, was that I might well be a woman in
lean toward it. Not that I didn't have them finally. some scientific, textbook sense (and could at least
Agonizing cramps, heating-pad cramps, go-down-to- stop faking every month and stop wasting all those
the-school-nurse-and-lie-on-the cot cramps. nickels). But in another sense in a visible sense I
was as androgynous and as liable to tip over into
But, unlike any pain I had ever suffered, I adored the boyhood as ever
pain of cramps, welcomed it, wallowed in it, bragged
about it. "I can't go. I have cramps." "I can't do that. I started with a 28 AA bra. I don't think they made
I have cramps." And most of all, gigglingly, them any smaller S in those days, although I gather
blushingly: "I can't swim. I have cramps." Nobody that now you can buy bras for five-year-olds that
ever used the hard-core word. Menstruation. God, don't have any cups whatsoever in them; trainer
what an awful word. Never that. "I have cramps." bras
they are called. My first brassiere came from
The morning I first got my period, I went into my Robinson's Department Store in Beverly Hills. I went
mother's bedroom to tell her. And my mother, my there alone, shaking, positive they would look me
utterly-hateful-about-bras mother, burst into tears. over and smile and tell me to come back next year.
It was really a lovely moment, and I remember it so An actual fitter took me into the dressing room and
clearly not just because it was one of the two times I stood over me while I took off my blouse and tried
ever saw my mother cry on my account (the other the first one on. The little puffs stood out on my
was when I was caught being a six-year-old chest. "Lean over," said the fitter. (To this day, I am
kleptomaniac), but also because the incident did not not sure what fitters in bra departments do except
to tell you to lean over.) I leaned over, with the knockers; all the time, whatever size I was, carrying
fleeting hope that my breasts would miraculously around this rubberized appendage on my chest that
fall out of my body and into the puffs. Nothing. And occasionally crashed into a wall and was poked
I knew that no one would ever want to marry me. I inward and had to be poked outward-I think about
had no breasts. I would never have breasts. all
that and wonder how anyone kept a straight face
Here are some things I did to help: through it. My parents, who normally had no
Bought a Mark Eden Bust Developer. restraints
Slept on my back for four years. about needling me-why did they say nothing as they
Splashed cold water on them every night because watched my chest go up and down? My friends,
some French actress said in Life magazine that that who would periodically inspect my breasts for signs
was what she did for her perfect bustline. of growth and reassure me - why didn't they at least
counsel consistency?
Ultimately, I resigned myself to a bad toss and
began to wear padded bras. I think about them now, You probably think I am crazy to go on like this:
think Here I have set out to [give] a confession that is
about all those years in high school that I went meant to hit you with the shock of recognition, and
around in them, my three padded bras, every single instead you are sitting there thinking I am
one thoroughly warped. Well, what can I tell you? If I had
of them with different-sized breasts. Each time I had them, I would have been a completely different
changed bras I changed sizes: one week nice perky person. I honestly believe that.
but
not too obtrusive breasts, the next medium-sized
slightly pointy ones, the next week knockers, true
SOURCE INFORMATION
Author: Nora Ephron
Book: Best of Modern Humor
ISBN: 978-0394515311
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc
Date (Month/Year): Oct 1983
AWARD HISTORY
2003 National Qualifier – Prose
2005 National Qualifier – Prose
2011 National Qualifier - Prose
