Dear beloved readers,
Throughout my life I’ve always wanted freedom. From being able to stay out as long as I wanted, no curfew at all, to the way I dressed, because being my mother’s daughter meant having your own clothes picked up for you until the age of 12. When you are younger and you are in the pre-teen years, you know, your body is changing, you are starting to absolutely loathe yourself and you are turning into a little rebel and mostly, everything that inflicts on said freedom is an absolute nightmare. Parents become our worse enemies, we want to throw fire at the teachers and the schools, we just want to, for once in our short lives, to do whatever we want.
When I was 13 and this crazy need for freedom started to build up inside me, all I wanted was allowance money to do whatever I was doing with my group of friends at the time. I wanted to dress like Effy Stonem and I wanted the liberty to curse and to behaved as I pleased. Also wanted piercings and tattoos (which I am glad I only got after I was 18, otherwise I would have the most cringy Harry Potter tattoo sleeve ever), to have sex and to smoke cigarettes, because let’s face it, when we are younger, everything that is even slightly inappropriate, slightly frown-upon, lights a fire on our asses and it’s like it’s begging us to do it.
For instance, I’ve always hated wearing bras. All my life. When I became a teenagers and hormones happened, I realized that it was my time to start using the damn thing, they would apparently help keep everything in place, they would make me more socially accepted, and they would make my boobs somewhat look perkier. But then, as I turned 17 and had the brilliant idea of getting a breast enhancement surgery, in my mind it would fix all my problems, for once I would have the boobs I’ve always wanted and I also would never have to wear a bra again – because yes, that’s how I thought things worked.
And it was pretty accurate for three years, but now at 20 and basically not wearing any bras since I was 17, I get to say that as much fun as that was, it surely had consequences. And I realized that the feeling of freedom I got from not wearing bras, came with consequences, such as lower back pain, and that I had to make a choice: were bras really so bad that I would rather not wear them and live with my back hurting for the rest of my life, or should I simply get one and see what happens?
But the thing is, it was not just a bra that I would be buying. In my mind this would inflict with the freedom I longed for so long and had for a few short years. Because if you are a woman, and Carrie Fisher already proved that, you hate wearing a bra, but often enough you find yourself buying one because people expect you to wear one, because in society’s mind, being a woman equals wearing a bra. So this week, while Christmas shopping with my mom and facing the hard task of buying a brand new bra, since I had no clue what my size was, what style was I looking for, what color I wanted it in, I nearly had a panic attack.
I went into the dressing rooms and the lady basically walked in along with me, she was explaining bras to me as if it was rocket since, as if they would cure cancer and not only hold my breasts in place. She gave me every color imaginable and every type of cup – because really, if you tell a sales person you are not sure what you are looking for they just have to show you everything they have in stock. By the time she left me alone with the pile of bras I was sweating, staring at my reflection and once again wondering what the hell is my life. Did I really went all those years without knowing that bras seemed to give some sort of superpower to women? That they could reshape your boob and make it like, four cups bigger? That they could be lace, and Italian lace and bedazzled and see-through? But mostly, I was asking myself, as great as everything she was trying to sell me seemed to be, what was the price to pay with this purchase?
I just got off the phone after yet a long talk with one of my best friends, Nick. He was, as always, wondering about the “what if”s of the universe, but since it’s Nick we are talking about, he always goes the extra level, and he started to wonder what if every decision we made now impacted the past not the future. I am not gonna carry on this because it was literally a three hours conversation and we got to no conclusion at all, but considering that our decisions, our choices do impact our future, how would buying this bra impact on my future freedom?
I know what you are thinking, it is just a bra. And truly, it’s complicated fabric to hold your boobies in place, but to me it’s not just about that. Like it wasn’t just about being able to stay out longer than I was allowed to, like it wasn’t just about being able to speak whatever I wanted to whoever I wanted, like it wasn’t just about behaving a certain way because it was expected me to do so. Freedom, when I was younger, was being allowed to become who I longed to be, and I made every possible decision for this to come to be my reality, but now it is, I have the freedom I’ve always wanted but, like every action has a reaction, every choice impacts the future, and freedom, when you are older, comes with a price.
That is why it’s scary. When you are an adult, freedom comes with responsibilities, because there’s not gonna be no one there to tell us what we should do, we are supposed to know. So yes, we are basically allowed to do anything that doesn’t inflict the law, but everything we choose to do or not will impact our lives. I can wake up every morning and decide not to go to college, this is the freedom I wanted when I was a kid and I didn’t want to go to school, but back then my mom forced me to, now no one does. Now it’s up to me to get up everyday, get ready and go. So do we lose the sense of freedom we always wanted when we were younger or it just never existed at all?
Maybe the concept of freedom we believed and desired when we were kids is just a fantasy. A perfect life in which we get to do whatever we want with no negative impact whatsoever on ourselves. In this perfect reality, I would never have to wear a bra, I would never have to go to college even when I was having an off day, I wouldn’t have to grow up and get a job, I wouldn’t need to behave in a certain way or dress “appropriately” for certain situations. But it’s not how it works now, is it?
Because in real life, I bough the bra. Am wearing it right now and absolutely hating it. My back feels better, my everything feels fine, but I don’t like it. I feel like I lost my power, like I am a slave to the fabric I am wearing. Which is probably a little dramatic, but it’s how I feel. When we are kids we don’t see past the good side of this idealization of freedom, we are blind by our obscure desires of staying up past midnight and buying cigarettes with a fake ID. But then we grow up, and our bedtime is way past midnight, and now when we walk in 7/11 they already have a pack ready to go, now we dress however we want and we don’t answer to anyone, just ourselves. And the things that were once exciting and adventurous in way, are no longer. They become part of our reality and as empowering as it is, it is also really scary, and the magic is not there anymore.
Not wearing a bra was my way of breaking this. It was my source of freedom whenever I felt small and powerless to this world. And maybe that was naive of me to think that by doing that I was doing anything groundbreaking, amazing, spectacular, revolutionary, but it made me feel free, and that was powerful. Now, currently wearing a bra, I do feel less powerful and less free, but it’s the inevitable thing about life, right? You can’t always get what you want. This is the real life, and in real life we will have to do uncomfortable things because it is part of the deal. We will have to public speak, we will have to do things alone, we will have to give in sometimes, even when we don’t want to. Maybe this piece of fabric is what this means for me, maybe it’s just another item in the long list of things I hate about growing up. Because in the end of the day there is a price to pay, and as reckless as I feel when I listen to punk rock and have this sudden urge to just say “F*CK IT” and do whatever, that is not really optional.
Growing up means a lot of things, I wrote in here about this more times than I can count. It doesn’t have to be as boring as the way we perceived it as when we were kids, but it doesn’t have to be so limiting either. Yes, I will settle with the bra, but I hope I never lose this need for freedom that I have in me, because this is what somehow makes me want to get things done, to change to world, to create things, to adventure myself and to achieve the impossible. People always say life is short, but in fact it’s pretty long, and in this decade, the one I am officially an adult, no going back, I want to live as I please, I want to mind my own business, I want to focus on myself and I want to feel free, but not the kind of freedom that I get from not wearing a bra, but the kind of freedom that lights a fire in my soul and whispers in my ear “everything is possible”.
Maybe we are the generation that heard all life long that we could be anything and we mistook it for we are going to everything. Maybe we are too ambitious, maybe we’ve lost our minds, maybe we are longing for something that is impossible, that doesn’t exist. But you know what? We are free to be everything, and that is what we shall be. So instead of burning my brand new bra, I will focus on the little voice whispering to me, because that is what freedom is all about, not the fantasy concept, the real thing, the real thing is about making everything and anything possible, is about being bold and loud and risky and crazy and that beloved readers, is what we shall be. Until next week, get ready for the 2019 recap, happy holidays and oh, and don’t forget to stay out of trouble but if you don’t – oh my god, tell me all about it.
– Your Girl on the Go