For the majority of my adult life I hated lingerie. Even buying a simple, everyday bra was the worst shopping experience for me.

I have small boobs. Barely an A cup. And whenever I walked into a lingerie store the sales associate would hand me something with a padded cup and an underwire to milk my small A cups for everything they’re worth.

Most of my adult life, I begrudgingly wore those bras.

They were always uncomfortable, they never looked good under my clothes (the cup of the bra always made that line across my chest that basically screams, “my boobs don’t properly fill out this bra”) and the bras just didn’t feel like “me.”

Then I had a huge revelation.

It was in a barre class where I had befriended one of those woman that roam the streets of New York and also happen to be amazon models with the limbs of a giraffes. She too had small boobs and saw the bra I was changing into after class in the locker room.

She actually ripped my bra from my hands and handed me hers and with her charming Dutch accent she insisted I put it on.

You don’t say no to gorgeous Dutch women who are handing you bras in locker rooms.

So I did. And voilà. It was like putting on a perfectly sized glove.

It was a bralette with no underwire and very thin black straps that went over my shoulders. I felt like a prima ballerina.

Guess what? I hated lingerie this whole time because I was buying lingerie for the body I thought I wanted instead of the body I had.

All of those bras were trying to make my breasts bigger and in the process they diminished me as a person.

Ironically, I had the body I wanted all along. I just didn’t know it because I was betraying it by trying to contort it into a shape that it could never be.

Sometimes I still wonder what it’s like to have cleavage. But then I remember how much I like to sleep on my stomach and a want for big boobs quickly passes.

Photo by Karolina Kaczynska