Me and My Bosom

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One day, about two years ago, I looked in the mirror and was shocked to discover that my once-fabulous tits had transmogrified into a bosom. Whereas breasts—those sexy appendages that had gotten me past velvet ropes and bar tabs aplenty in my 20s and 30s—might be sexy and evocative, the bosom, despite its large size, is solely utilitarian, meant for comforting crying children against or storing Kleenex at weddings and funerals.

As she aged, Nora Ephron felt bad about her neck; I could no longer see my neck. Sometime in my 40s, everything above my hips had, you see, been incorporated into the bosom’s new terrain. My head sort of just perched atop my bosom, which sat atop my waist and my still-skinny legs.

I had seen this body before: on my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and an assortment of aunts and great-aunts. It was a physique typically packaged, in my family at least, with short haircuts, a purse full of peppermint candies, and blousy, beaded tops for “dress occasions.” It was what I’d always considered “Doña Body” and is well documented in generations of family photos of “mature” women seated together, smiling, their ample bosoms lined up in a row. And suddenly, there that body was, in my own mirror.

I wondered. I am 46; I am not a doña—certainly not yet. I am not married; I have no