Your Boobs Are Yours Alone
Editor’s note: a few months ago, Uterish discovered some very cool shirts online. Being in the cool shirt business ourselves, we got in contact with Zhai, who agreed to write about how her shirts came about, and why screen printing shirts with individualized boob designs on them (we told you the shirts were cool) is important to her. Here’s what she had to say about screen printing, self-expression, and the expectations our society projects upon boobs.
One of Zhai’s designs.
About six months ago, I started screen printing again. It’s something that I’ve always loved doing. I love doing it because it’s fun. But mostly, I love screen printing––and surface design in general–– because it’s been a way for me to engage my creative side and express myself in a more organic way. If you walk into my house, one of the first things you’ll see is a large design I did. Red and white stripes bleed into a recognizably Chinese pattern while smaller embellishments––each significant to my life in some way––decorate the spaces in between. It’s hung front and center to hide the breaker box, yes. But really, it stands as a stark reminder that reconciling the multiple facets of my Chinese-American identity is, and will continue to be, a messy and imperfect balancing act.
Screen printing has always been a deeply personal and cathartic process for myself. Unfortunately, it fell out of my life in the last two years with the increasing demands of my day-to-day. I didn’t start it up again until Christmas when the break afforded me some extra free time. I decided to print some of my gifts and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed the process. I felt inspired to keep it up in the new year and I began taking requests from friends here and there. Then in a pivotal moment, I was asked, “Hey! Do you think you could print some boobs on a shirt for me?”
I loved it. I loved the whole idea. I loved it because I saw the shirt’s potential to be something much bigger than itself. As I printed that first boob shirt, I had the thought that maybe I could create more of these shirts––each one unique to its owner––in celebration of all shapes, sizes, and forms boobs come in. Now, each person that buys a shirt can leave a note on their Etsy order that includes a general description, measurements, or even contact information so that I can reach out for a photo. I use whatever details a person feels comfortable sharing to create a design unique to them in a style that’s consistent across the shirts. Each shirt is a chance for me to share with people a design that is as personal to them as the printing process is to me. All together, these shirts are an attempt to push back against the idea that there is only one “right” way for boobs to look and be.
It’s no secret that society can sometimes struggle with understanding and representing women as more than just objects. One of the big vehicles of female objectification is society’s relationship with, and portrayal of, boobs. Censorship only targets boobs that can be "identified as female" (whatever that means), which reveals a weird societal concern with the gender presentation of the boobs, as opposed to the actual gender identity of the person the boobs are attached to.
In other words, anyone with boobs is treated as a woman, and as such our society’s adamant policing of boobs and nipples also crosses over into a policing of women––in spite of the fact that not all women have boobs, or boobs women. The media’s adamant censorship of the specifically “female” nipple highlights an ideological gap that reads a “woman’s” chest as inherently sexual in some way, where other chests don’t receive the same treatment. In response, our society asks people with boobs to cover up, to maintain modesty, to preserve some vague sense of “purity.” And yet simultaneously, in a seemingly contradictory fashion, it capitalizes on the sexuality of those very same bodies. You can see this contradiction at play on magazine covers across America of half-naked women posing side by side with newspaper articles and politicians lamenting the idea of breastfeeding in public.
The message is clear: bodies with breasts, and women’s bodies as well, do not belong to their owners. They belong to the public. It’s up to everyone else to determine when and for what reason we show our boobs. And moreover, it’s up to everyone else to determine what they should look like when we do show them. Breasts are no longer something we can use to represent ourselves the same way we might choose to do with our hair or our clothes. They’re advertisements––and as advertisements, they have to look a certain way. Do a quick Google search for “Sports Illustrated swimsuit covers,” and you’ll know exactly what I mean. The reality is that there’s really just one, maybe two, ways that society expects boobs to look and that expectation leaves the majority of people with boobs feeling alienated in their bodies.
I myself have a complicated relationship with my boobs. As someone that has never strongly identified with my own femininity, I’ve always made attempts to divert as much attention away from my chest as possible. On the other hand, I’m hesitant to just dismiss my boobs altogether because at least part of me identifies as female and they feel like an important part of that identity. This relationship I have with myself exposes the uncomfortable reality that American society recognizes boobs as a marker of womanhood, of femininity, and of gender in general. In this way, society makes an attempt to use our boobs to regulate not only our sexuality, but our gender identity as well.
Here’s the thing though. Your boobs are yours alone. You dictate when, where, and how you want to show them off. And in that respect, you choose when, where, and how you want them to represent you. Me personally? I negotiate a balance of my gender on terms that involve hiding my chest beneath more masculinely-structured clothes. On the other hand, some people choose to accentuate their boobs in the way they dress for numerous reasons. Others have never really given their boobs much thought. However you feel about yours, my goal with these shirts is and has always been to give people a more explicit means of representing their bodies in whatever way they see fit.
If you’d like to purchase a boob shirt, I’m selling them on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/GoodInkSeattle. 10% of the profits from every shirt go to Planned Parenthood.