A woman recalls being bullied in sixth grade for her body, then spending years in padded bras trying to fit in. Growing up with a photographer father surrounded by images made the rejection hit harder.
Mine started in middle school, actually. So I grew up. My father is a commercial photographer. And so we always had books in our house of women who are naked, because that's a lot of black and white photos, and none of them had breasts. And then I went to middle school, and suddenly it was not okay. And I was bullied by girls. And so the most, like, traumatic thing that happened to me is I was changing in the girls locker room in sixth grade, and all these girls circled around me, and they said, if you didn't have feet, would you wear socks? And I'm standing there completely confused, like, no. What? Wait, what? And they said, then why are you wearing a bra? And then they all laughed and pointed and did you know? And I was just, like, horrified, I suppose. So I was suddenly not fitting in with my peers and my tribe and the pack. So obviously something's wrong with me. And that continued my entire middle school and high school, to the point that I was then wearing padded bras and doing everything that I could at someone who was attracted to me, and I fit in again.
