Unhooking the Bra

When I turned twelve, I was expected to wear a bra. It was an unceremonious introduction into the grim world of what I thought was adulthood. The rite of passage was defined by the act of being held by the hand and led discreetly into a lingerie shop. It did bother me that while my brother casually sat half-naked on the bed watching television at home, I had been removed from the playground where I played ball with the boys, to accompany my mother to the shop.

The first ten minutes were spent observing her deliberate upon which cup-size would best suit me. She then gestured the woman behind the counter to come forth and take measurements. The lady scribbled some numbers on paper, nodded a confident “hmm” and turned around to dislodge a few boxes that towered behind her. She pulled out an assortment of bras and swiftly arranged them with the deftness of a Blackjack dealer.

I paused, my cheeks beginning to take colour. My knees buckled. I didn’t know what make of this momentary paralysis. So I stood and stared, wide-eyed, biting my lip, my fingers reaching out to crunch the hem of my skirt. I glanced vacantly at my mother who was now looking at me. It felt as though she had become a head taller and I had just bit into the pill prescribed to Alice.

“What maa?” I whined with a pitch of bored irritation that masked confusion.

“What, what?” she twittered. “Pick up the ones you like and try them on.”  

 “Buutt…” I whined again, this time more nasal. 

“You want me to come with you? Chalo, I will come with you. Where is the trial room? There? Accha. Let’s go.”

And off we went, carrying five bras in tow. By now my cheeks had turned crimson. I walked to the trial room looking down, avoiding the eyes of the male staff that followed me.

That evening, I was gifted my first bra. Well, bras. “We’ll buy two,” my mother had informed the woman, before slanting her head sideways to say, “that way, you can wear one every alternative day. For starters.”

It wasn’t the idea of wearing the bra that bothered me, it was the idea of getting used to it. I didn’t like the faint pink marks the straps left on my shoulders, at times mimicking a zigzag pattern or a simple thin line, depending on the cut of the strap. I didn’t see the point in strapping on an extra piece of clothing, especially in the unforgiving heat of summer.

One day, I returned home fuming. I forced the door shut loudly behind me and marched in to see my mother. Ma was working in the kitchen. She was whipping an egg with a strange determination not to stop.

“Ma,” I mumbled, half surprised and disappointed by the tone I had chosen. Words seemed to collect like rough pebbles in my throat. I could hear my heart pick up pace. Ma looked up, the whites of her eyes flecked with red. She had complained of not sleeping well the last two nights. “What?” she asked, still whisking, the fork scraping and keening against the steel bowl. “See this…” I turned around to show her my back and then turned again to face her. She looked at me and blinked. The whisking hadn’t stopped. A few moments later, she bunched up her brows and said, “I’m sorry, what is it that you want me to see?”

I was flipping now. “This!” I cried, turning around again. Sweat had plastered my shirt to my back. “Can’t you see? All the boys are laughing!”

Ma narrowed her eyes and leaned over to inspect what the fuss was all about. Then she trotted off to the other corner of the kitchen and returned with a shapely onion.

“I’m listening,” she said, rolling her fingers over the vegetable, the filmy purple skin crackling under.

“They noticed it today. It was just so hot. I couldn’t help it. And they noticed it.”

Ma was now slicing the onion, thin ovals of white collapsing haplessly onto the chopping board. “And,” I continued, desperately, “Arjun pulled his t-shirt to his chest and put it behind his stupid large head and said, ‘Boys and girls are not the same! So you cannot play with us!’ And I said, ‘Of course I am same!’ So he said, ‘then do what I have done!’”

Ma pursed her lips and turned towards me. Her eyes were looking directly at me now, not distracted or shifting like they were a few minutes ago to estimate how much kitchen work remained. Her voice was calm when she spoke, “Did you do it?”

“No,” I said coldly.

She responded with a succinct “hmm!” and then picked up the knife, pinched the flimsy slices together and progressed to dice them with deliberate focus.

Something inside me sagged. “Maa,” I whined, making one last attempt to draw out some sort of attention from her. She finally placed the knife on the granite and turned towards me. Her fingers traced the contours of my chin and then affectionately nudged it upwards. “I know how you feel. I had a tougher time getting used to it when I was your age, but this is a part of growing up. You will just have to accept it.”

“Buutt...” I began to reason while sliding a finger underneath my bra to attend to an itch. “It’s not fair. Why don’t boys wear this stupid thing?”—I called it “this stupid thing” till my 16^th birthday; I was too embarrassed to call it anything else—“Why can’t I pull my t-shirt over my head and jump around like that monkey Arjun?”

In my head, these questions seemed logical, and they were. Ma agreed, lending a nod or two to the conversation, before eventually sighing and reiterating, “It’s just a matter of getting used to.” Hers was an upbringing dictated by social conditioning and now, she was transmitting it to me. “After a certain age girls are expected to wear bras. People talk otherwise,” she said. Who were these people and why did they care? And why was it okay for boys to parade about shirtless, while while girls had to be relatively dressed conservatively?

Years later, Lisa Esco asked the same questions through her film, Free The Nipple. The popularity of the film, possibly for its controversial content, was undeniable, but it led to the emergence of a greater, more powerful movement called #FreeTheNipple that is now making headlines, breaking ground and well, unhooking bras. Have a look and follow it if you’re not a part of the movement already.

{gender, growing up, non-fiction, jabber, notes from a forgotten diary, #freethenipple}