A grade 9 bra-size measurement and the shame that followed

in grade 9, I found the formula for calculating bra size so for calibration I measured my pecs and the result I got was B-cup (I forget the number) and when I told my friends at lunch one girl said that was obviously wrong & that I was an idiot & made fun of me over the years

Aaron @AaronEstel · Jun 23, 2023

so I mentioned this to someone at VC, but one of the weirdest hacks for releasing the cringe from my self-concept has been just tweeting every memory I compulsively cringe over. they almost immediately lose their power

quoting @AaronEstel: once when I was small I wrote "form Aaron" instead of "from Aaron" on a thank-you card to an aunt I got yelled at for "wasting" the card. still feel kinda ashamed about that.

Jun 23, 2023

somehow the whole incident felt for years like something I wanted to memoryhole / wishing I hadn't mentioned it shame + couldn't get my friends to stop bringing it up and I didn't know how to talk with them about it or get any shared reality

I guessed pretty immediately that it wasn't a coincidence that I got flak from a girl who herself was not that busty probably she felt socially threatened, as if I'd said "you're so flat even I, a guy, have a bigger chest" & she was saying "fuck you" to that. which... fair!

I still don't know if I actually measured wrong or if my pecs were just huge as fuck 🤔 I had done an absurd number of pushups earlier that year so it's not inconceivable

anyway yep it seems like curiosity & revealing honestly is a good antidote for shame I think part of what felt so bad in the first place here is that it felt like my curiosity itself was the target of the shame fuck that. I can be curious about bra sizes if I want!

do *you* know the specific meaning of the letter/number combo of bra size? like you don't have to know exactly how to measure someone and turn that into eg 32C, but you know what the "32" refers to and what the "C" refers to

something the internet is missing, SOMEHOW, is a grid of photos showing how eg "D" does not refer to a specific "size of boobs" (like volume) but is relative to underlying chest-size diagram on the right tries but it's both visually fake & technically inaccurate