I wasn’t embarrassed like most girls when my mother told me I was finally allowed to buy a real bra at the age of eleven. I thought nothing of it when I was dragged off to an overly lit department store to be measured and strapped into womanhood by an old lady whose own womanhood was sagging well below her knobby knees. If anything, excited probably described me more accurately. I imagined that when a girl received her first bra, something magical happened. After purchasing a dainty white brassiere with the customary pink rose bud in the center I firmly believed that the rest of my existence would be all fun, football games, cheerleading, dating, kissing, and ultimately, marrying my high school Zach Morris look-a-like sweetheart right before we both skipped off to Yale on scholarship; perfection, in a dream world. I was just praying my very own seemingly useless 32 AAA cup bra would bring me some boys, popularity, and hopefully at some point, breasts.

“Any day now,” my mother would tell me when I asked her when she thought my ‘nature’ would arrive. By sixteen, my asking had all but turned into whining.

“Why isn’t my bust as big as hers?” I’d pout and my point to my younger C cup sister across the room.

My mother, barely listening to my complaints, would adjust her reading glasses and lament without looking up from her Vanity Fair, “Because I filled out the questionnaire wrong.” My first Victoria’s Secret push-up bra was the blessing I’d asked for.

“Excuse me?” I asked the sales girl, “What do you have that has the most padding? And can I have ten of them?” Working on commission, the young well-endowed college student was eager to send me home a full cup size larger.

“This one,” she picked out a hot pink number perfect for that night with Topher Grace I’d never have, “is probably my favorite.” She held it against herself, “It also comes in beige, black, white, and blue.”

“I’ll take them,” I said without hesitation and wore the white one out of the store. Sure, the very expensive bras had more than enough padding in it to make me feel like a line backer, but at least I was always ready to go long. Not to mention it also gave the illusion that I had a bust of some sort.

I’d love to say that after my purchase the boys were on me like Angelina Jolie on a black orphan, but unfortunately, I seem to only attract those pesky genuinely nice boys who don’t care about a girl's breasts or looks. You know, gay guys.

Popularity didn’t come so easily either. The very fact that I dress like a nun hindered me from ranking any higher than Drama Nerd in school. Even with padding, wearing a lacy V-neck “down to there” is out of the question. I just end up looking like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothing. I had been convinced for years that I would never grow up, and eyed the leggy, full-busted, and seemingly perfect eleven year old Jamie Bohanan with a pure hatred that I’d later come to understand was jealousy.

Boys flocked to “that slut” as my friends and I called her lovingly between bites of Lunchable in the blue and white ‘cafetorium’ that never failed to be a perfect fifty-four degrees. As she waltzed by our brown table, swishing her newly arrived hips through the air like Naomi Campbell (pre-crazy) on the catwalk, my flat-chested friends and I would try to burn holes into her skull with our eyes- while really trying to pick up fashion tips- or picture her slipping on an impeccably placed banana peel so at least she could at least feel as awkward as we did. We were too naive to realize that she probably did feel as awkward as we did, just for a different reason. When she was finally out of earshot, nine times out of ten I would be the one to lead us into a chorus of “I hate her”. She had a life none of us could have or understand, a life with more problems than we would probably ever know. Our dream was her reality, and the reason she never went to a sleepover or a pool party. When she’s famous for being beautiful and people roll their eyes when she tells Vogue she was teased as a girl, I’ll believe her, because I was there and I was probably the one she’s talking about who called her a whore.

Part of Stephanie will always pine for Zach Morris...

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