I have a close friend who is one of five sisters. These unhappy women now claim Keeping Up ruined their lives. During the first several years, it was always with some variation of the headline, “I’m The Hot One Now!” These naturally gorgeous girls never seemed to believe they were beautiful, or to aspire to anything other than being beautiful, and were in constant competition for the spotlight. More recently, the Kardashian headlines have followed an “I’m Leaving Him,” or “I’m Leaving The Show,” theme. For years now, we’ve watched them appear on magazine covers. Thus I look with sadness on the entire Kardashian family. The teenager who once feared that A-cups would not be enough to attract a mate now knows that a sarcastic wit, faithful affection and the ability to wield a drill with a 1/2 inch spade bit are more than enough to make him stay. I’ve also started to learn what many 30-something women before me have learned- that there is more to me than my body. My body has served me well, and I hope it will serve me for a long time to come. Fifteen years and five more kids later, I stand in front of the mirror and barely remember what it felt like to be worried about whether my sister’s bra was bigger than mine. And even still, my infant was smitten with them.Īlong with changing breasts came other changes. As the year wore on, they shrank- not back to the virginal “grapes” I’d been told (by a middle schooler, of course) I had before, but to something more closely resembling deflated balloons. She clung to them with the tenacity of a captain to the wheel in a storm at sea, gulping with a comical disregard for social convention. She compared them to no one else’s, not for size, or shape, or color or firmness. Although my proportions were more classically “feminine” than they had ever been before, it was something else that changed my thinking: the experience of having a newborn who was absolutely obsessed with my breasts.
That would have been exciting if they hadn’t been competing with my enormous belly.īreastfeeding was the ultimate change in perspective. They had a humble start in life by the time I was fifteen my younger sister was taller, weighed less, and still had a bigger bra size than me. Getting pregnant for the first time meant, of course, that for the first time I actually had “perfect” breasts. These breasts have been through a lot for their young age. But I do stop to ask myself- aside from the fact that I absolutely can’t afford to get my bosoms tweaked, except in the natural sense, which breastfeeding babies seem to love doing (ouch!)- whether such a surgery would really set a positive example for my daughters. I myself have contemplated getting these post-breastfeeding bosoms tweaked. That seems to make one more of the Kardashian clan who, through the artifice of plastic surgery, has crafted herself into her ideal of the “perfect” woman. A hot 50-something doing lingerie shoots for Vogue.