You Can’t Actually Remove them for Formal Occasions

I really wish I knew where to find my prom pictures right now (high school friends, got any you could scan?), because this isn’t going to be nearly as interesting without an illustration.

Nevertheless, picture this: a tea-length, lavender, raw silk Laura Ashley dress with a full skirt and surplice top (taken up in the shoulders by a tailor, half because I’m short and half to minimize cleavage). Short white gloves. Pearls. Dyed-to-match shoes with a low Louis heel and a bow on the instep. All picked out with the help of my mother, who went to a Catholic high school in the ’50s and never subsequently updated her standards for modesty and good taste. (You might remember her as the woman who sent me to Homecoming in a wool dress with long, puffy sleeves and a neckline that nearly choked me. Plaid. Also Laura Ashley.)

So, yeah. The prom get-up was very retro. Very cute. Very deeply uncool at the time. Are you getting a picture?

Now add in that I was a DD-cup. And that, despite alterations and my mother’s seal of approval, it was a surplice neckline; looking at me straight on, there was zero cleavage, but if you looked from above, there was a bit. And now add in that practically every teenager and adult alive–except, notably, my mother–was taller than me.

Total all that up, and I’m thinking I would have been turned away from this prom.

Parents dropping off their students said several girls and their dates were turned away from the party after a teacher deemed their dresses too provocative. Most of the offending garb apparently involved excessive display of cleavage.

Check out that slideshow. How much cleavage do you see? ‘Cause I’m not seeing much at all. What I’m seeing is:

• several African-American girls
• a few chubby girls
• a whole bunch of girls with bigger-than-average boobs

Because both being chubby and being African-American predispose one to having bigger breasts than the average skinny white girl, and because “excessive display of cleavage” was blamed when half of these dresses reveal no cleavage at all, I’m thinking it’s safe to say it was about the tits.

In fact, Zuzu already said it:

You know something? I’m really fucking tired of my body being classed as “vulgar” or “inappropriate” or someone’s fucking “stumbling block” just because I have large breasts. I try my best to not let the girls out in public unchaperoned, though I will certainly wear honest-to-god revealing tops when I’m in the mood to turn someone on. But as we’ve seen in this space recently, it doesn’t take a whole lot of breast tissue for people to start making judgments about one’s character and sexual habits — even so-called feminists.

Yeah! What she said!

Furthermore, those of you who’ve been around since the Pointless, Incessant Barking days have heard me rant about how much fun it is to look for formal wear that can accomodate big hoots. For those who haven’t, allow me to quote myself:

What you learn when you shop for formal dresses is, breasts are not appropriate for a black-tie affair. Artificially constructed cleavage on scrawny woman is appropriate, apparently, but if you have actual breasts—i.e., the kind that require an actual bra—you’re up shit creek, because formal dresses only come in strapless, spaghetti-strapped and halter.

“So buy a strapless bra,” you say.

“HA! Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Ohhhh, damn, that’s funny,” my boobs say.

Nevertheless, I try. I find myself a bustier that sorta kinda fits. 34F.

And, you know, I bitch a lot about the general lack of bras in my size, because seriously, who needs one more—me or a 32A, who has 800,000 adorable frilly options, while I have, if I’m lucky, my choice of two beige, industrial-strength grandma bras with four hooks and straps wide enough to land a plane on? But it turns out there is a very good reason why it’s extremely difficult to find a size 34F bustier: no one should own one. Ever. Because, even though it does manage to hold my tits up and keep them more-or-less in one place for five minutes at a time, the tragic fact is, breasts that are actually made of breast tissue, as opposed to silicone, cannot hold a consistent shape on their own. So I’m standing there looking in the mirror, like, “Woo hoo! They’re sufficiently cantilevered! A miracle of engineering! Now I have all sorts of formal dress options!” And then I look down and realize I no longer have boobs, so much as… puddles of crepey fat. Which, if I wore a strapless or spaghetti-strapped or halter dress, would be visible to anyone taller than me. Which would be every adult in the world.

The options just aren’t there if you have boobs, no matter how much you would love to find yourself a modest–and, not for nothing, comfortable–formal dress. And that up there is me at 30 years old with a dead mother and enough money to be choosy. I can only imagine being 17 or 18, looking high and low for a dress that would go over my boobs, let alone cover them, finally finding something appropriate, getting all excited about dressing up and going out… and getting turned away because I had the temerity to show up at prom with breasts.

I hope those girls went out and had themselves an awesome anti-prom party, though I doubt that’s what happened; I’m guessing it’s more likely that those who weren’t allowed back in after “fixing” their dresses went home and cried their eyes out. That’s certainly what I would have done.

So I hope that, at the very least, the teacher who turned them away is feeling mortified by the attention right about now. Better yet, feeling ashamed. You know, like she thought those poor girls ought to feel. Jesus.