So, today I'd like to talk about how I've done one little thing that has managed to somehow be one of the most affirming and comforting things I've done for myself just about ever.
A little context: I am an AMAB non-binary person of indeterminate expression and interest. I don't really have much of a desire to dress femme-y at all, but rather just have super intense body-dysphoria. As such, about a year and four months ago, I started feminizing HRT. The results have been rather... interesting, to say the least, at least in the last two months or so. I was never particularly muscular, and was pretty damn overweight at the time, so visually obvious results were pretty minimal. Then I got sick. Like, really sick. Nausea and vomiting and being unable to eat or get out of bed for like a month and a half. I managed to get treatment and proper medication that solved the problem, but the whole ordeal combined with depression just completely rewired my eating habits and I lost a lot of weight, and am still losing weight, as a result. That's all well and good (though my doctors are still a bit concerned that I'm losing weight too fast), but it made one thing super apparent: I have breasts now. Basically, every part of me has been slimming down as I lose weight
except my chest, which has actually continued developing if anything.
On the surface, this is great! It's super comforting and affirming and I'm super happy that I've gotten something tangible out of the whole ordeal. It raised a few issues, though. One, this development happened extremely fast and is super obvious. If I lose any more weight (which I likely will), then I wouldn't be surprised if I'm just instantly outing myself to anyone that hasn't been seeing my frequently over the last few months. Two, they just kinda... look weird. In an unfortunate combination of having a very broad chest, the original basis for the breasts being just plain, old fat, and the peculiarities of MTF post-puberty breast development in general, they've just come out rather pointy, which doesn't help how obvious they are in the slightest.
Here's a few (bad) pictures illustrating what I'm dealing with, here (forgive the ill-fitting shirt, I need a complete wardrobe overhaul after losing so much weight, but clothes are expensive):
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So, yeah. Cone shaped with nipples just poking through all the time for everyone to see. It makes me pretty uncomfortable and if it wasn't winter, thus necessitating coats, I wouldn't want to leave the house at all. "But PM, why not just get a bra?" you ask. That's the thing. As I said earlier, feminine clothing never really interested me after some early experimentation, so I never bothered. That left me high and dry in the research and general knowledge department when suddenly I found myself needing one for
practical reasons rather than dysphoric or gender-affirming ones. I spent about a month freaking out over how to measure myself and what style to get and how to shop and try one on and all that junk, and it caused me a lot of stress. Only after talking things over with people on Discord a few days ago did I decide to just go ahead and just get some cheap XL sport bras off of Amazon because that was way less stressful and the sizing was vastly simpler. They came in yesterday, and this is the result:
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Much,
much better! I still obviously have boobs if you know to look for them, but things are a lot more under control and, uh, publicly presentable. No more unnecessary movement, either. They also look a lot more natural under a shirt, as they're contained in a far better shape. It's also way more comfortable than I was expecting. I got super lucky with this fit, it's pretty much perfect after I messed around with the positioning of the padding a bit. I do fill out the cups completely, though, which means that if I develop further I won't be able to get a bigger size in this particular brand as I already bought the largest they had. That'll be fun. It also means that I'm in the C-cup range, which just kinda has me feeling
after either not thinking about it or just not expecting much.
In conclusion, I look and feel much better now! I'm still not used to the sensation of wearing this thing, but it's not unpleasant by any means. Now I just have to talk with my family about it before I have to put them through the wash and confuse a bunch of people.
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