TASSEL TWIRLING 101
Remember your first bra? That verging on A cup, training bra? This clothing item had two purposes: to mask breast buds and to serve as a horizontal bulls-eye for the boys in grade 5 who seemed to make it their life’s work to SNAP the back of that sucker as soon as they glimpsed it underneath your shirt. Those bras didn’t have any padding, so God help you if it was cold and your nipples stood to attention, because everyone would notice them. Boys. Girls. Teachers. The Custodian. EVERYONE. Or so you thought.
My barely there pre-pubescent breasts sqwooshed into that fabric at the age of ten – already pushing things down, smoothing them out. One hook at the back. Earning my Brownie badge in “Brassiere Closure.”
Shopping for that first training bra at The Met in 1978. And when I say “The Met” – I mean The Met department store at the Greenwood Mall in the heart of the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia… Canada.
You move beyond the B cup and you’re up to at least two hooks. By the time you sport those D cups, you’d better hope that you have at least three hooks or there could be a situation.
As I take the bras from their ‘delicates’ bags to move them to the drying rack – because, let’s face it, if you’re paying $50 or more for something that reliably lifts and separates your girls, you DO NOT put those fuckers in the dryer – I look at my bra and I look at Rissa’s. Rissa’s with its 1″ band and two dainty, nay elegant, hooks. Mine, with the almost 4″ band and 4 Industrial/Frankenstein hooks to corral my beauteous pulchritude into its massive cups that (cool fact!) could also serve as hats/medical masks if need be.
Along with the rest of the breast-blessed world who are”sheltering at home,” I have mostly been eschewing the brassiere, letting the girls go free range. This lack of underpinning is indeed comfortable – as long as I move sedately. Coming down the stairs in the morning, I find myself riveted by the clapping sway of Itsy & Bitsy, wondering how I can reliably replicate the motion, for NOW is obviously the time to invest in pasties with proper tassels and get on that middle-aged burlesque career track.
“Am I doing it?” I ask, bouncing up and down.
“Please don’t make me watch you practice this,” says Rissa before subsequently yelling, “Pear! Pear! Ma is shaking her breasts at me!”
“She’s doing what with her breasts?”
“I’m learning how to twirl tassels!!!”
David comes into the room. “You’re what?”
“I’m learning, ” I say as I continue to bounce, “To twirl tassels!”
“Un-huh…”
“How’s it looking?”
“Well, there is definitely A LOT going on there.”
“What if I try the shimmy method?”
“I’m going to the other room to read,” says Rissa.
