Let Me Get My Hands on Your Mammary Glands

I often joke while on stage that my large-for-a-Chinese-girl bosoms (34D) is because of the American diet I grew up on. Cheese, milk, and other food types that are not typically in the Chinese diet. Most Asian women have a petite frame which I have always been envious of, and no one else on my Mom’s side possess cups larger than B’s. I will tell you right now that it is absolutely true what they say about the grass being greener on the other side. I’ve always envied the smaller-chested girls running around without having to wear a sports bra, going braless in 100 degree weather, and hello, being able to buy a dress without any tailoring and buying swim suits off the rack. Not to mention all the beautiful, delicate lingerie made with wispy, transparent silks designed for smaller chested girls. All through my teens and twenties I struggled with the size of my boobs. This may sound ridiculous as if I’m bemoaning a blessing, but the traditional Chinese society is NOT a “breast society”. Western countries such as Italy, US, and Spain, are a lot more breast-centric and breast-lebratory.

There are two new burlesque performers in NYC, Cheeky Lane and Stella Chuu, who are also Chinese-American, and like me both are buxom lasses with ample D’s. When I first started working with Cheeky and Stella, I wondered to myself if they encountered similar experiences as I did when I was growing up. I heard things from my Chinese family such as “big breasted girls are dumb” and by “dumb” they meant easily doped by men to jump in bed with them. Stella encountered a different Chinese wives’ tale. “My Chinese mother thinks it’s bad to have big breasts because ‘you will get breast cancer’,” she said and added, “She also believed navel piercings caused birth defects.”

I was discouraged to wear anything that went lower than my clavicle or shirts that actually had a shape. I remember too well one morning when my mom dropped me off at school and she said, “Your shirt is too revealing.” (I was wearing a black boat-neck top from Express in the mall.) “Your dad said he can’t even look at you lately because of how much you are showing.” This hurt deeply. And it shamed me about my body. I had no control of puberty, and I had even less knowledge of how to present my changing body to the world and especially in front of my dad who I was close with until then that is. With these words that I’m sure she doesn’t remember the die was cast. I went through the rest of junior and high school doing everything I could to minimize my breasts. I didn’t bind them but I did consider it. I have to admit writing about this makes me sad. I know now that what I felt was shame. I didn’t know when I was younger. I just thought sexuality was bad. Perhaps this is also another reason why the art form of burlesque and striptease attract me. Women who express their own sense of sexy with humour, brazenness, or abandon. Women who are not apologetic or shameful about their bodies whatever shapes they may be. If I had an older sister at that time maybe things would have been different. But most Chinese women from my mom’s generation grew up in a time and another culture where the idea of “being in touch” with one’s body is as alien as masturbation – another taboo subject in the Chang house I have never ever dared to approach.

But after talking to Cheeky and Stella, I realized that they grew up with a much healthier attitude about their sexuality and larger than average breasts. Cheeky who described herself as a “fat kid” when she was younger realized what she really had once she lost the baby weight. “By the time I was 18, I realized what awesome assets I had, and I went and started working at Hooters. Just for a summer. It was so fun!” Likewise even as a teenager Stella “was aching to let people see my breasts.” She said, “I absolutely love my breasts. They are my favorite part of my body. I love showing them off and playing with them.”

So where was I during these girls’ insane in the mammarian-brain celebration of their breasts? Apparently not in Connecticut (both Cheeky and Stella’s hometown) where the New England air must have liberated their cultural, sexual and breast-ual trappings. Cheeky even remembers with fondness the first time she went bra shopping with her mom. “My mom took me to a Hanes, and all I remember was being in the dressing room and 20 different bras tossed at me. No measuring, no explanations. Just a ‘see which one fits’.” She described her first bra as “cute. Simple white cotton training bras with lace” – most possibly every girl’s first bra. Mine was also white and lightly padded. It was actually a hand-me-down from my best friend at the time. She had started developing earlier than I and neither my mom nor I wanted to “deal” with the situation so I wore the hand-me-downs for a while. A while wasn’t long because I quickly outgrew them and had to begrudgingly make the inevitable trip to the mall. For some reason, it was an overall unpleasant situation. I never felt like it was something to celebrate, this coming of age shit. Why couldn’t girls come of age the way boys do by hunting small animals, surviving in the woods alone overnight, witnessing a murder by the train tracks (ok that’s from movies). Going to the mall in suburbia to buy a stupid “training bra” did not teach me anything about my changing body or the daunting task of how my body will change the way others, men and women, will relate to me. Cheeky recalls an incident she had in the school gym locker room that prompted the first bra purchase. “I was changing, and another girl (completely flat-chested) saw me take off my shirt and shrieked ‘Eeewww! Get a bra!’ and started laughing with her friends,” then she quickly adds with her usual attitude-laced nonchalance, “Guess who’s laughing now, betch?”

It might just be my particular family’s inability to deal with sexuality combined with Chinese culture’s repressive perspective on sex that created such an air of discomfort for me when I was a teenager. That’s why it still amazes me that my mom attends my shows nowadays. It makes me think that she has also adapted a new way of thinking about women’s bodies and she’s starting to see the fun, the humour, the comedy of being sexy with one’s body. I think she gets it now, that being sexy isn’t always being low class and trampy or any of the derogatory images she associates with “sexy” from TV and films. She is also a breast cancer survivor of eleven years and I think that more than anything else has fundamentally changed her views on many things in life. Nowadays when people ask her what she thinks of my burlesque career, she says simply, “She’s young only for a short time. She should enjoy doing what she can.” I look at my mom often. And I wonder if I would be able to redefine my sexual identity without my breasts and then I realize that the breasts shouldn’t make the woman. The woman makes the woman. The sooner I can absorb this as truth the happier I will be.

See more pictures of Cheeky & Stella >