This is a excerpt from the Just Boobs Project book. These are real women, their thoughts and feelings, their breasts.
I was a 36B for years and then I gained my mid-life weight and my breasts got much bigger. I really enjoy my pretty cleavage, it’s very womanly. Yes, I weigh more than I want to, but the one thing I would never do is avoid looking at myself naked. I’m not going to hide from my reflection and not look at myself. Even though I may not be thrilled with my weigh or how everything looks, I still look at my body and say, “This is my body and it’s what it is”.
I grew up in a more open family. We saw our parents naked. We would run from our bedrooms to the bathrooms naked. I would call my mother a modest 50’s woman, if you looked at my parents on the outside they were conservative people and did all the things they were supposed to, but, in our home, bodies were not anything to be hidden.
When we were little we had a cottage on an island in the middle of a lake. It was in the busiest part of the lake and we had to strip down outside and hang up our things before going inside because we weren’t allowed to go in the cottage dripping wet. So, you were outside getting naked in front of God and everybody. I remember my mom looking at me, when I was first starting to develop, and she said to me, “Oh, you’re going to have breasts like your aunt Sara. She’s chesty”. It wasn’t said in a negative or positive way, it was just a statement of fact. Just like, “you have so-en-so’s eyes”, instead it was, “you have aunt Sara’s breasts”. Nudity was no big thing.
Mom and dad never told us to cover up, or got upset because we were naked. As a result we weren’t ashamed of our bodies and it wasn’t weird or embarrassing to see other naked bodies. I’m comfortable with my body. I think that helped me have a healthy body image.
