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\u2019s side possess cups larger than B\u2019s. I will tell you right now that it is absolutely true what they say about the grass being greener on the other side. I\u2019ve 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\u2019m bemoaning a blessing, but the traditional Chinese society is NOT a \u201cbreast society\u201d. Western countries such as Italy, US, and Spain, are a lot more breast-centric and breast-lebratory.<\/p>\n
There are two new burlesque performers in NYC, Cheeky Lane<\/a> and Stella Chuu<\/a>, who are also Chinese-American, and like me both are buxom lasses with ample D\u2019s. 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 \u201cbig breasted girls are dumb\u201d and by \u201cdumb\u201d they meant easily doped by men to jump in bed with them. Stella encountered a different Chinese wives\u2019 tale. \u201cMy Chinese mother thinks it\u2019s bad to have big breasts because \u2018you will get breast cancer\u2019,\u201d she said and added, \u201cShe also believed navel piercings caused birth defects.\u201d<\/p>\n 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, \u201cYour shirt is too revealing.\u201d (I was wearing a black boat-neck top from Express in the mall.) \u201cYour dad said he can\u2019t even look at you lately because of how much you are showing.\u201d 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\u2019m sure she doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019s generation grew up in a time and another culture where the idea of \u201cbeing in touch\u201d with one\u2019s body is as alien as masturbation – another taboo subject in the Chang house I have never ever dared to approach.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cfat kid\u201d when she was younger realized what she really had once she lost the baby weight. \u201cBy 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!\u201d Likewise even as a teenager Stella \u201cwas aching to let people see my breasts.\u201d She said, \u201cI absolutely love my breasts. They are my favorite part of my body. I love showing them off and playing with them.\u201d<\/p>\n So where was I during these girls\u2019 insane in the mammarian-brain celebration of their breasts? Apparently not in Connecticut (both Cheeky and Stella\u2019s 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. \u201cMy 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 \u2018see which one fits\u2019.\u201d She described her first bra as \u201ccute. Simple white cotton training bras with lace\u201d – most possibly every girl\u2019s 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 \u201cdeal\u201d with the situation so I wore the hand-me-downs for a while. A while wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019s from movies). Going to the mall in suburbia to buy a stupid \u201ctraining bra\u201d 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. \u201cI was changing, and another girl (completely flat-chested) saw me take off my shirt and shrieked \u2018Eeewww! Get a bra!\u2019 and started laughing with her friends,\u201d then she quickly adds with her usual attitude-laced nonchalance, \u201cGuess who’s laughing now, betch?\u201d<\/p>\n It might just be my particular family\u2019s inability to deal with sexuality combined with Chinese culture\u2019s repressive perspective on sex that created such an air of discomfort for me when I was a teenager. That\u2019s 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\u2019s bodies and she\u2019s starting to see the fun, the humour, the comedy of being sexy with one\u2019s body. I think she gets it now, that being sexy isn\u2019t always being low class and trampy or any of the derogatory images she associates with \u201csexy\u201d 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, \u201cShe\u2019s young only for a short time. She should enjoy doing what she can.\u201d 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\u2019t make the woman. The woman makes the woman. The sooner I can absorb this as truth the happier I will be.<\/p>\n See more pictures of Cheeky & Stella ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I often joke while on stage that my large-for-a-Chinese-girl bosoms (34D) is because of the American diet I grew up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3289,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2111,1003],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sex-and-health","category-tv-film"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"winifredm","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c094bbbfbff578a0e575eb788a67b6563e4a872ce8666b7b7d33cc3375ad887b?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"5","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"I often joke while on stage that my large-for-a-Chinese-girl bosoms (34D) is because of the American diet I grew up","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Sex & Health","TV & Film"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":186,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":7,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"winifredm","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=3289"},"magazine_blocks_comment":5,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c094bbbfbff578a0e575eb788a67b6563e4a872ce8666b7b7d33cc3375ad887b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"Sex & Health<\/a> TV & Film<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}