Bare it All

File under things no one ever tells you: When you lose more than a few pounds, your chest could be the first to disappear. In this month’s “Life with the Girls,” writer Jonna Gallo works on accepting the changes her body is going through…both those she wanted and those she never expected. 

I lived my life under the impression that I was well-endowed. Busty. Zaftig. Stacked. As it turned out, I was mostly just overweight. Surprise!

I’ve been gaining and losing fairly substantial amounts of weight since I was about 15 years old. I’d lose 20, then gain 25. Lose 25, gain 30. The net effect of this wash-rinse-repeat loop was that, by my mid-40s, those extra gains had added up, and I was rather seriously overweight.

My lovely internist, head tilted to the side and with a kind but worried expression, encouraged me at my annual visits to “start addressing it,” saying it would only be harder as I crossed the threshold into my 50s. (What the what? I’m still, like, 33. Aren’t I?) In my heart of hearts, despite being all for the body positivity movement, I alighted onto a few hard truths: My energy was low, my spirits were lower and I had very few pieces of clothing that I genuinely felt good in. The whole situation was a brain drain and a bummer.

Then, last winter, my husband got sick. Life-or-death sick. Sitting by his bed in the Intensive Care Unit for six days and nights, staring at the monitors, idly counting the beeps, attempting and failing to doze, I somehow arrived at the conclusion that, for the sake of my own health, I should get some weight off.

When your breasts have long been your best asset, it can be a pretty rude awakening how much they change after nursing two kids. In this month’s “Life with the Girls,” the always camera-ready Dawn Yanek explains how she eventually embraced her postpartum pair. 

“Mom, your boobs are really squishy.”

So said my 7-year-old son as we were cuddling recently, and he nestled the back of his head against my chest. I stifled a laugh and kept snuggling.

It was only a few minutes later that I realized how weird it was, my non-reaction. His remark didn’t even faze me, but it was a far cry from how I used to think of myself.

Once upon a time, I thought of my breasts as a really great accessory. More effective than any necklace or designer handbag, they were my go-to statement piece. They could be dressed up or dressed down; they could make or break an outfit. They were many things, and squishy was not one of them.

But when I became a mother, I realized that my boobs are more like a Rorschach test. How I think about them depends on how I think about myself. For the past few years, that’s been all mom, all the time.

Even in paradise, Kristen Jules had a tough time accepting her post-baby body. In this month’s “Life with the Girls,” a stressful run-in with airport security forces her to unpack the angst she’d been carrying around.  

There are many good things about breastfeeding your kids. Being mistaken for a drug mule isn’t one of them. Yet there I was, attempting to fly home to my babies after a romantic weekend getaway in Mexico, waylaid by a smirking woman in khakis wielding a stick.

“Step aside, miss,” the TSA agent in Cancún instructs after I pass the initial security scan. My heart starts to race; our plane boards in an hour. We’re tired, hungry, a bit hungover.

“Why?” I ask, slightly annoyed by the inconvenience. I’m told that my bag was flagged for a suspicious item and that I would have to wait for a more thorough inspection of my belongings.

Soliiiiid, I think as I watch her begin to unpack my garments one by one with the kind of pointer a teacher in grade school might use to rap on the board.

One after the next, the various breast-enhancing undergarments that I’d brought along were produced. I had breastfed my two children for three years all in, and my naturally perky 36Cs had deflated a few cup sizes. Push-up bras made them look worse; not wearing a bra was no longer an option. At 35, I felt like I had lost one of my best assets, and no amount of double-sided tape or chicken cutlets was going to fix the problem.