by Melody Bowen
Corpus Rebellius: Rebel Without... uh... Bras
It started a few weeks ago when I noticed one of the first signs of getting older: I could no longer get up from a seated position without making noise. The "ugghhh" noise. (Not a good sign.) Then came the pain in the joints. My hips, knees, and ankles started to cry out to me when I tried to use them to move myself to and fro. At first, I wrote off this pain as changes in the weather, dehydration, soreness from walking... blah, blah, blah. I finally saw my doctor last week, and she confirmed my worst fear. It's probably arthritis. (My grandmother had arthritis. My grandmother!)
Then there's my skin. When I was 25, I used to brag (big mistake!) that I had only had 11 zits in my entire life. Yes, in my entire life. One of the rare perks of being a woman in my family was genes that led to a lack of oily, blemished skin. Unfortunately, those non-oily genes are now parched, and the supple, near-flawless skin in my twenties has turned to ultra-dry reptile-esque skin in my thirties. (I fear for my forties. What's next? Molting like a python????) Doc says it's normal, use some moisturizer, drink more water, yadda yadda yadda...
And last of all -- my boobs. (Sorry to get terribly personal.) The girls (my boobs) are huge. H-U-G-E, gargantuan, enormous, huge. The scariest part: It was this side of one year ago that I went under the knife to fix this! Last August, I underwent "breast reduction mammoplasty", which is a polite way of saying "I got the girls trimmed up." I'm not kidding when I say that I went in asking for him to simply "take a few inches off the bottom", which is basically what the surgeon did. I lost over three pounds of breast tissue on the table that day. Which was great! (My back and shoulders were never happier). And, frankly, a secondary benefit of breast reduction is that it defies gravity and lifts the girls to places they haven't seen since around age 19. I went from low beam to high beam in a matter of hours. (I could pass the pencil test again! OK, OK, so I can still pass the pencil test all these months later. However, my boobs are huge again. AGAIN!) I was so delighted last fall when I bought my first bra in more than a decade that had a size ending in a single letter (a "D") instead of multiple letters (I'd say how many multiple letters, but let's not go there). Now that the little army inside my body has taken over, I've moved back to Multi-Letter-Land again. What's up with that? My body is rebelling (corpus rebellius!), and I'm running out of bras that fit.
Writing this lament about the state of my rapidly aging body reminds me of the terrible event that happened very near my thirtieth birthday. Fair warning: This is one of those things that happens to women that our mothers never tell us about. (Like the day in fourth grade when we learned about the uterus and the "monthly visitor" and listened in horror as the school nurse held up one of those old-fashioned sanitary pads that actually had belts like the ones described in Are You There God, It's Me Margaret...). But I digress. (Clearing the throat.) Around age 30, something happens to our asses. Yes, our asses. One fine day every 30-something-year-old woman looks at her derriere in the mirror and finds it somehow -- well, quite frankly -- longer than it was before. (Yes, longer.) Instead of the cute little bum we all remember that resembled half an apple, we suddenly find ourselves with half a pear. Not good. Not good at all. And the worst part was that we had no warning. No warning! I don't know a single woman -- not one on the planet -- whose mother warned her that her bootie would suddenly elongate immediately after her thirtieth birthday.
That's how I feel today. Like my body has passed another I'm-getting-older milestone -- again without warning -- and nothing, nothing, nothing can turn back time and make this body young again. So, now I will take my calcium supplements and my glucosamine and my multi-vitamins like a good little (old) girl, and I'll try not to whine anymore than is absolutely necessary (outside this forum, at least). I'll do my level best to at least be thankful that "the girls" are still, well, standing up and looking around, so to speak, instead of... um... staring at my shoes. At least I have that. Even if they are going to be the size of my head for the rest of my life.
Note to readers: I have further evidence that I'm getting old. Last week -- adding shocking insult to already agonizing injury -- I opened my mailbox to find an invitation to join the AARP. (Gahhh!! Those insensitive bastards!) I, of course, shredded it immediately.