Customs, traditions, cultural practices.
Something so ubiquitous you wouldn't even notice, unless, you are on the outside of that culture. Certain greetings, dispositions, even the normal social graces we give to each other, are completely different in other parts of the world.
Sometimes it feels as if I've traveled to a new place, with different expectations. In this new part of the world, staring is a normal greeting. Eye contact is mostly avoided, especially when first meeting someone new. The eyes of most people you'll meet here will stay below shoulder level and dart up every now and then, but it will be obvious to you that its not the custom to maintain eye contact as the default with new acquaintances.
I'm American so this is my normal context. It used to be at least. A greeting would go something like this...
" Hi, nice to meet you" followed by a handshake at most. But in this new world I've moved to, hugs seem to be the norm. A lingering and long embrace, not just with men I meet, but women as well. As if the warmth I'm generating was needed to maintain temperature, except that its 70 degrees out, and we just met, and this hug is VERY close.
The black and white above was one of many that day, but just to illustrate what I mean, that is a friend of mine's older brother whom I had literally only met 2 hours earlier, and he was giving me a hug with the squeezing intimacy of lifelong friends that wouldn't see each other again for a years to come.
And its not like im flaunting anything, I'm dressing them down and minimizing as much as possible. I look borderline fat and frumpy, but he could tell somehow. And that's common, a hug that both shows affection but also does something else, it looks to inspect something.
"are they real?"
"are they really that big"
"maybe shes just heavyset...cant be" ...
and a hug probably answers these questions, examines whats underneath the ocean waves of sweatshirt, and comes back with answers I suppose. I'd say its better than someone straight up asking, but in this new culture, thats not uncommon either. especially with women.
"does your back hurt"
"I guess thats where MINE went"
"they're STILL growing?!
and of course
"where do you buy bras"
The conversational style here is definitely more direct than I'm used to. New customs. Of course, customs aren't always social. Sometimes they're practical. Sometimes a problem is being addressed with a cultural norm, and if it isn't fixed, a new culture is born. A new custom.
5 clasps, extra wide straps, triple stitched, industrial strength. These are not words that describe a flirty and flouncy piece of underwear. These are engineering terms. Y'all have asked endlessly about what I wear under my tank tops, how I wrangle the girls and keep them off my lap. Well here it is.
I went the custom bra route a few months back. Luckily there's a local place I've been able to actual go in to. I think Elizabeth Valentine and Ewa Michalak probably do an incredible job as well, but I'm lucky to live near a major city so I did some google searching.
Measuring was awkward, but I at least knew I was getting closer to some comfort. She DID tell me this was the biggest project she'd worked on, but I kinda half expect that at this point. took about a month for it to be made, and that was around 6 months AGO.
More stability when walking, weight more centered, each breast encapsulated so there is less cleavage and therefore less boob sweat and rubbing. I was ecstatic. The only issue is how utilitarian it looks. Well... that and the fact that now I've officially outgrown it.
The Gore in the center is designed to keep my breasts separated, but they've put on so much mass now that they overflow the cups and create cleavage anyway. I feel like a rainstorm, typhoon, flooding a dam to its capacity and then some. Constant change.
Maybe that's the strange thing about customs.
Whether they're social customs or practical ones, they only exist because they solve a recurring problem. They work until they don't. Then people adapt. New customs emerge. New traditions. New solutions.
Looking back, that's been the story of this whole experience.
Every time I thought I had finally found "normal," normal moved.
A new bra. A new wardrobe. A new way of sitting. A new way of introducing myself to strangers. A new explanation from doctors. A new answer to questions I'd never expected to be asked.
For a little while this bra felt like the end of that process.
Turns out it was just another chapter.
The funny thing is that six months ago I would've looked at these photos and thought, "Finally. Problem solved."
Now I'm looking at them and thinking, "Well... I guess we need something new."
New customs to eventually outgrow.
-Plushy