Free The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs by Dawn O'Porter Page A

I’d shout
    â€˜You’re not ready, not now’ and I’d furrow my brow
    What was she on about?
    Passing the dairy shop entrance
    She would sigh with a waited temperance
    â€˜Mum, I want them! Those milk jugs!’
    And she’d pull me along with her tugs
    Next up it was the baps on display
    As the baker stood mixing his whey
    The cans in the store, the melons galore
    The kegs in the pub, the man selling balloons while eating his grub
    The funbags on sale midst all of the toys
    Being stared at and played with by all of the boys
    The scooters with hooters and tonkas with honkers
    I wanted them so badly it was driving me bonkers!
    And then finally one day
    After years of dedicated pray
    I gazed in the mirror with a dumbfounded stare
    Had someone actually answered my prayer?
    Sweet Lord I finally had a pair!
    And it was then that I knew what my mum had meant
    I’d have been all shopped out with my money spent
    When there was no need to panic; the process was much more organic
    I jumped in the air and shouted ‘Hoorah!’
    But then I thought ‘Shit’, I have to shop for a bra.

JAMEELA JAMIL
    My breasts and I, as with any relationship, I suppose, have had our ups and downs. Although I can sufficiently say, since heading past ye olde twenty-five mark, it’s more a case of downs. Literally. But we had our glory days once upon a cleavage – long, long … LONG ago. I had few attributes growing up; I was far too tall, socially inept, incredibly chubby, spotty, train tracked and worst of all, I considered the lunch ladies to be my only friends at school. But to compensate for the arse I was dealt (an arse that DARED to be both big AND flat!), God (or whoever) bestowed upon me some enormously capacious knockers. They were the light(s) at the end of my dark teenage tunnel. Though I am sad to say that for the first few years of our time shared together, I was deeply ashamed by them. I felt as though they were unwelcome squatters on my chest, I found their size embarrassing and attention-seeking. They completely stole my thunder from age thirteen onwards. Always entering the room SEVERAL seconds before me, constantly introducing themselves to strangers before my face even had a chance, and blocking my view of the television if I ever tried to watch telly lying down in bed, not to mention their knack for turning running for a bus into a game of volleyball. The day I was measured in John Lewis and was forced to buy a 38HH bra, I remember weeping. Hating my father for it, because they are without doubt inherited from him. He’s known for his ample bosom. Still quite firm for a man in his sixties. I would spend hours constructing diversion techniques by stooping and swanning around in oversize men’s shirts.
    Looking back, I feel deeply ashamed of my animosity, and more so … naivety. What I saw as impostors were actually loyal friends in disguise. Assets I didn’t realise could one day become something of a currency in the bedroom and, the feminist in me is loathe to admit, almost everywhere else. And yet, in what I now look back at as their glory days, I took them totally for granted. Since my teen years, I’ve lost five stone. A large portion, as with most women, came off my décolletage, and now where those mountains once stood proud, lies a very unimpressive pair of molehills. Molehills that with every year try to run further and further away from my face. I have this recurring nightmare that by my fifties I shall be able to wrap them around my neck and fashion some sort of new age (or old age) bow tie out of them. (She shudders.)
    Nonetheless, I’m glad we had some time together. I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologise to my breasts for the years of abuse and neglect I subjected them to, all the sports bras two sizes too small that I shoved and folded them into trying to flatten them down, for all those times I huffed and puffed because I