A memoir of missing nipples

Pui Yan Rachel Hui revisits her peculiar childhood illusion of disappearing nipples.

[Content warning: body shaming, breast cancer]

I moved in small sedulous steps in the rhythm of restraint.

I was always a little embarrassed, a little confused, to glance at the passing breasts on the pavement. As a little child, this kind of voyeuristic perspective stemmed from unspoken embarrassment, far from the sexualising gaze I now often inevitably exert. In my eyes, the heavy connotations of these breasts were reduced into lightness of pure unknown.

On the streets, there were some fat ones, some flat ones, some sturdy ones, some delicate ones that came into view. I wasn’t aware of what this hanging flesh on the chest was called. Despite these different shapes and sizes, every single one of them was round and smooth. There was a sense of coherence in their effortlessly polished surface.

When I looked down - in contrast - two pointed tents were sitting on my plains, and the supposedly continual slopes were abruptly folded into obtuse angles. Why could other women look graciously tender, while I was born with spikes?

I naively assumed that in the process of growing into a woman, nipples would naturally recede into smooth surfaces. I had been looking forward to growing up, to watching the plains rise into hills, the tiny pointy tents slowly collapse and disappear. I would have picnics and run freely on them. In my imagination, water was wide, mountains were high, and the world was vast.

I was certain that my breasts would eventually be kneaded into complete spheres when I grew up - no points, no spikes, just spheres. This imagination was partly derived from the memory of undressed mannequins behind store windows. All of their breasts looked exactly the same: round, symmetrical, just the right size, and without nipples. No points, no spikes, just spheres. These mannequins were the first naked women I had ever seen.

That was until one day when my mother took me to a public bathhouse, I saw a room full of naked middle-aged women. All at once, I saw the most nipples I’d ever seen in my life - large and small, dark and light.

Most of the women chatted in groups: some talked about health regimens, some talked about dinner dishes, and some talked about their immature adolescent children. Here, they were naked and at peace. When they talked, their natural movements at times pulled their breasts ever so slightly, as if they could finally take up space and meet the air.

My little brain was taken aback. Breasts stayed pointed after all, and nipples would not disappear.

From then on, I no longer dreamt about disappearing nipples. On the one hand, I found myself a little closer to reality; on the other, I found myself a little further away from becoming a woman. If nipples did exist, where had they been?

As my body developed, I became more and more accustomed to hunching my back, and more and more accustomed to wearing a cardigan on hot days...

In the life process of becoming a person with breasts, this body has always permeated a sense of embarrassment, but the sense of shame was only intensified when I grew into a teenager. Embarrassment can be a self-inflicted feeling; shame is imposed by others. This feeling became stronger and stronger until, in junior high school, I realised how we collectively wore down the adolescence of every teenager with breasts, cutting from the surface of embarrassment to the core of shame.

I started wearing bralettes — the kind of underwear that imitates bras but with no padding. In fact, what is that for? As a teenager, I did not have large enough breasts for them to be necessary. Perhaps, they could get me used to the feeling of wearing a bra.

I got used to the feeling of wearing a bra. At the time, my favourite activity was taking dance classes - I could wear a burgundy backless leotard and a black chiffon wrap skirt with some matching ballet shoes. In my tight-fitted leotard, I always wore a bralette. Despite its thin fabrics, it covered the trace of my nipples and made my chest look smooth.

I spent my entire childhood wondering where these nipples had been, not realising that they were made invisible by a kind of underwear called bras. As human civilisation evolves, the bra merges with the breast, penetrates through skin cells and into fat tissues. Women wear breasts and grow bras. It’s natural.

I was wearing the most ordinary style, and it was the only style I owned. The underwear was in the shape of a vest with fabric on both front and back, which was bound to be exposed when wearing a backless outfit. I didn't consider this a problem: I could not simultaneously expose my back and wear a bralette. I could choose either the front or the back, only one of the two. I chose the former.

This decision caused massive ridicule. My classmates pulled my bralette from behind my back, mocked me and said, if I wanted to look pretty, I shouldn't have worn a bra in a backless dance suit.

As I undressed after class, I wondered: what is pretty? Showing nipples is not pretty, exposing my bra isn’t either. 

I recall striking imagery in Iris Marion Young’s Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling. Without a bra, breasts would no longer be a solid form, but a fluid existence of different shapes following physical movements such as raising one’s arms, lying down on one’s back or side, and bending forward. Without a bra, breasts would be unbound.

But I insisted on wearing mine.

Choosing between showing nipples and being bullied was a double-edged sword of shame. The latter was destructive, but not as exhaustingly torturing as the former. Without a bra, one’s breasts become unbound, but one’s consciousness is indefinitely brought back to one’s chest. Chests are the windows to the world: I could push them open, but they are just windows I could never step out of. How was I supposed to dance?

As I pondered how to wear a bra nicely, my mother revealed much later that she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer at the time. Perhaps, in another room, she also pondered how she could wear a bra nicely post-mastectomy.

In Xi Xi’s autobiographical book, Mourning a Breast , I learnt that only mammals with breasts as their secondary sexual characteristics would get breast-related diseases, and most of them were males. In comparison to male mammals, women, trans men and non-binary people all grapple with breasted experiences among humans. Yet, only human breasts developed other purposes other than breastfeeding, such as confusing me for my entire childhood. Such as making my mother worry about her appearance over her illness.

These two lumps of flesh bring shame when we are young, and illness when we are old. Either way, the purpose of breasts becomes their looks.

My mother's breast cancer was then cured without the need for a mastectomy. Shortly after, I withdrew from the dance class. She kept asking why but I refused to tell, just as she refused to reveal her cancer. 

There we were, lost in our individual turbulence of thoughts, and unknowingly capturing what would be on the minds of millions of people with breasts. This elephant in the room remained silent until missing nipples eventually became visible, and the world could no longer unsee mine.