To the woman at the bra store who clocked me as a “Gerry” in reference to my G-cup breasts when I was coming of age,
I’m certain you haven’t spared one thought for me since our only encounter nearly twenty years ago. But your impact on my life has been so significant that I’m compelled to write to you now—especially as I find myself reaching to readjust a new bra that just doesn’t fit right.
The year was 2006. “Temperature” by Sean Paul and “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield were on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. I was trying to survive high school.
And my breasts were enormous.
Granted, you may not have appreciated how embarrassing that was for me at the time. I’m sure you met people like me every day, which is to say, fools, with deep grooves in their shoulders caused by ill-fitting bras. But my enormous breasts were not something I had yet come to terms with—that is, until that fateful day when I met you.
I want to say your shop was filled with the dank haze of cigarette smoke, but that can’t be true. My mother had dragged me there against my will. It was off the beaten path and named like a birth control pill: Portia’s. Or maybe, Calista’s… something like that. I assumed it was your name. Regardless, with its unthoughtful fluorescent lighting, I could tell that it was a store for old women and moms—like you and my mom—not me, a young woman coming of age, whose only desire was to fit into the bras at the Victoria’s Secret in the mall where the other kids shopped.
(I was once “measured” in that Victoria’s Secret by a fellow child/employee. She declared me to be a 34DD and brought me six options, none of which fit, three of which I purchased. You would never have done me wrong like that.)
When my mother and I walked into your store, you took one look at my chest and had me clocked. “Yer a Gerry,” you said. Blunt. Dry. Didn’t even have to measure. My real-world Hagrid, breaking the news to me hard.
And you were right. I was a Gerry. Gerry, as in “G-cup”.
Look, I know that you were (I assume) fifty-eight years old, and I was a teenager. But because I was so clearly humiliated to be alive, let alone in your shop, could you not have at least chosen a name like, oh, I don’t know, Gabrielle? Gisele? Or some other G-name with any appeal whatsoever that might have inspired some confidence?
I wish for my own story arc that I could say the young woman standing in front of you (me) could handle a G-cup diagnosis. Had anticipated it, even. That the nickname “Gerry” conjured an image of, say, Geri Halliwell. Powerful. Independent. Geri with an i.
But unfortunately, the way you said it was definitely Gerry with a y, and it instead conjured the image of whoever the opposite of Ginger Spice was. It didn’t help that you seemed to be telling me Gerry was also your nickname.
“Here, this is the one I have,” you said, thrusting a giant bra into my shaking hands.
Surely you had noticed our age gap? I was wearing Phat Farms, and you were smoking indoors (not really, but that’s how I perceived you). In any case, your oversight did not spark joy for me.
The bra in my hands was brown with stripes. BROWN WITH STRIPES, PORTIA. This was 2006, not today, when brown is cool. Each cup looked like a Viking helmet.
“It’s practical,” you said. It felt like you’d slapped me. If you had, I wouldn’t have noticed. The room was spinning by that point (perhaps because I could breathe properly for the first time in that bra, but that’s beside the point). The musty gold curtains of the dressing room seemed to be moving on their own. But they weren’t moving on their own—it was you, coming in, without warning; a cigarette balancing on your bottom lip (again, not really, but that’s what I saw).
You tightened my straps, spun me around, and pulled at the clasp to make sure the bra fit just right. You handled me like I was a heifer at a livestock auction. I looked down at my udders. I didn’t know they made bras that big. But they did, they made them for me.
“Perfect,” you said.
Was it?
“Okay,” I managed to reply, hoarse from your cigarette (fear). I considered saying thanks, but I wouldn’t have meant it, and also, I was a teenager.
And that was it.
My mother bought me The Brown One, and another, less offensive, pale green one, and I never saw you again.
I raise this with you now because, although you did me a great service that day, the moment you christened me “Gerry” has stuck with me for my entire life. The name is a tattoo on the breasts of my soul.
I sometimes wonder how many other weary teenagers you released into the wild in this way, bearing a giant bra and a tragic nickname. Where are they now? The ones with smaller breasts—the Debbies, Ediths, and Francines; or heaven forbid, larger—the Harriets. I would love to know them. My sisters.
As for me? While I entered your store that day as a girl, I left as a woman—a woman named Gerry. I honor you both each time I fasten the five hooks of my enormous bras.
And for the record, I’ll be returning the one I’m wearing now. I know better. You taught me.
Forever Gerry,
Katherine
