By: Morgan Epps
From the moment you were born, you had a pair of tiddies shoved in your face. They were a sign of comfort for your baby needs. You were fed, warmed, and even suffocated (at times) by them. And then, at a certain point, they were ruined for you.
As a young fem, I found myself having quite an unhealthy obsession with other people’s boobs. I would constantly daydream about my flat chest filling out my Justice sports bra and having, what I would’ve called them, WatermelonsTM. In 6th grade, my friends and I would rank our mid-pubescent boobs in the form of fruits, and I was the certified CherryTM size. (The girl who gave me this ranking gave herself WatermelonsTM, which were literally just B cups). One middle school sleepover had my friends and I trying on bras too large for us and that’s when I first heard it, the spark of an insecurity I'd never known existed, the dreaded utterance of the words: “Why are your areolas so big?”
Areolas? What? What the hell is an “areola?” We were like 12, why would I know what an areola is? For those who don’t know, an areola is that tinted part of your breast that surrounds the nipple. Most people don’t care about this part, ‘cause there’s not much to say about it, right? Well, at the ripe age of 12, it haunted me. From that scene in Pitch Perfect where Bologna Barb is LITERALLY called Bologna Barb because of her nipples, to the perfect, small, pink nipples on the ladies in porn, to even Cardi B getting bullied for hers. I felt trapped with the worst feature a breasted teen could possibly have. I couldn’t even be happy when I reached WatermelonsTM; my judgment clouded by big, brown salamis. I tried for years to find a way to fix them, but it was no use: I had huge areolas.
I wished I knew why. None of my friends could relate and it sure as hell wasn’t genetic. But as I've gotten to know my boobs, I’ve come to appreciate them more. Areolas can expand due to all sorts of reasons: pregnancy, weight gain, melanin. They can come in all sorts of colors, textures, puffy or concave. Sometimes, people just lose their areolas, and that's okay. I think this stupid insecurity of the “perfect boob” that is pushed onto us is just a diversion from the fact that people LOVE boobs, and they don’t want to admit it. Just think, next time you feel insecure about your boobs, whoever’s face you're shoving them into won’t mind that much anyways.
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