Power Girl vs. the Slut-shamers of Skiffydom: on cosplay and feminist pulchriphobia

My first love had large breasts. Barbara was rich — her parents lived on the Riviera with at least three servants. Breast size often has class implications and always has fashion implications. In the early ’70s, fashionable rich women did not have large breasts. Barbara got comments about her breasts from men and women, which made her extremely self-conscious. The hardest part for her was the disapproval of her mother, a small-breasted woman who had been a model as well as an athlete. Barbara wore loose tops and slouched, which only made her mother criticize her posture and sloppy clothes.

Now, Barbara’s breasts were not gigantic. They were Playboy in the 1960s large. If she had been middle class, and especially if she had been poor, she might very well have been proud of them. She might have modeled for Playboy — she looked remarkably like Barbi Benton, a Playboy model who was popular when I was fifteen.

To be a perfect daughter and to become innocuously attractive rather than conspicuously attractive, Barbara had breast reduction surgery. Among the risks were losing sensitivity and the ability to breastfeed. When she told me that, I cried, which I say as a man who was brought up believing men should not cry, so, to this day, I very, very rarely give way to tears. But a woman who I loved hated her body so much that she was willing to accept those risks in the hope of ending her torment.