Busting Out All Over

By Nan DePlume

Maybe it’s not like this anymore, but when I was growing up, adolescence meant one thing: Your body betrays you. Shapes and smells change, hair sprouts to emphasize locations you’d just as soon ignore, and weird substances ooze out of places you didn’t know you had before. At least that I didn’t know I had. Because I was a Catholic schoolgirl, circa 1976.

I’m tempted to follow the previous admission with the expression “God help me,” but even with all those priests and nuns and crucifixes around, God never appeared on the scene. At least that I saw. And if he were going to be anywhere, you’d think he’d be around to oversee the maturation of the students of St. Pius X. (Or, as the public schoolkids liked to call us, the ‘Pius Pussies’. I wasn’t entirely sure what they meant by that, but I figured it was bad, and likely dirty.)

Miraculously, after forcing me to serve a nine-year term at St. Pius, my parents let me move on to our town’s public high school. For me, that predominantly Jewish and Protestant institution promised salvation, which I loosely defined as escape from nuns.

There was just one vexing question: What to do about my tits? Neither nun nor mother had explained what happens to girls during adolescence, so I viewed my burgeoning bosom as an outward manifestation of the vaguely impure thoughts that had started coming in an unbidden and perplexing tangle. So of course I didn’t want anyone to know about the recent alteration to my physique.

About the only thing I’d appreciated about St. Pius was the blue-and-black plaid uniform I threw on every morning. Thanks to the camouflage of the generous vest that completed the female version of the Pius Pussy ensemble, my breasts had been my own dirty not-so-little secret. But in public school, I’d had to wear civilian clothes.

In preparation for the first day, I tried on a bunch of my big sister’s tops. The mirror revealed a consistent defect in all of them: detectable breasts. They weren’t prominent, but definite presences.

Then inspiration struck. I wrapped my chest tight in a paisley scarf, also borrowed from my sister. Examining myself from the side, I was thrilled to see that I’d achieved the washboard effect I was after. What could go wrong?

It worked perfectly that first week. I swanned around feeling stylishly androgynous, sympathetic but superior to the lumpier girls. Some of them were sweet, but they were kind of ungainly and so…mammalian.

The second Wednesday of my high-school career, I was walking out of the cafeteria with a couple of other girls when my breasts escaped their bounds. I seemed to develop in front of my new friends’ eyes, and far worse, those of testosterone-addled Marco Brutato, who gleefully shouted, “DePlume’s got BOOBS!”

An onslaught of unwanted attention ensued for the next couple weeks, mostly from Marco. My only clear memory is of the time he pushed his desk up right behind mine and waited until the teacher turned to the blackboard so he could cop a vigorous feel, working a slimy hand under the stretchy fabric of my hot-pink training bra. Several classmates witnessed the scene, and even those who’d missed it heard his boast about “getting a big chunk of DePlume.” God, I hated Marco Brutato—almost as much as I hated having chunks.

By the end of freshman year, things got way better. I traded my blue eyeshadow—the hallmark of Catholic schoolgirls trying to go bad—for the messy black eyeliner favored by schoolkids of both genders trying to go punk. One magic night, a friend and I took the train to New York City to see a Patti Smith concert. Thrillingly, she not only spat on stage—who knew a girl could do such a thing?—but flashed impressive black armpit bush in her sleeveless white t-shirt. Maybe, I thought, some of the gross stuff happening to me was actually kind of cool.

And I realized that not all boys were as brutish as Marco. Lester, for instance. He was short with frizzy, off-kilter hair that resembled an orange Brillo pad. Not boyfriend material, but there was a lot to like about him, including the fact that he was brilliant and Jewish.

Lester taught me that boys could have a sucky time in adolescence, too. My favorite recollection of him is still vivid, perhaps because it came in the form of a photograph with then-president Jimmy Carter.

Clever Lester had finagled a summer internship at the White House, and they set up a photo shoot at the end, to give the interns a souvenir. When Carter walked in the room, the thought popped into Lester’s head that the worst thing that could happen at that moment would be to get an erection in the presence of the president of the United States. So of course…

I laughed to the point of tears when he first showed me the picture—and I still smirk when my mind goes there, which it does more often than you’d think. Jimmy Carter is beaming and twinkling in that way he has, and the other kids look pretty happy, too. All except for Lester, standing right next to the president with a crazed look in his eyes and a binder held at an awkward angle in front of his crotch.