I turned 12 in early 1960. By that time my gynecomastia was very noticeable. I’m 63 now and it didn’t go away “with pushups” or anything else as the doctors said. I’m putting this under acceptance as it was life experiences as much as anything that has led to my current acceptance of my breasts. Medically it was a zero at that time. Nothing at all was going to be done. You get the one minute speech that it can happen at puberty, generally it goes away and that was it. It was that summer of ‘60 after turning 12 that the harassment started at the public pool. I was followed around by boys of many ages. They pointed and giggled and called me names. It wasn’t just the breasts. I was fat or maybe more accurately bloated but not obese. By age 12 I was 5’10” and 190 pounds with size 12 feet. To put it in perspective, I’m 220 pounds, 6’1”, wear an honest 52” jacket (not loose, just to have normal arm movement across back), have a 36 inch waist, 37 inch sleeve and have DD breasts. They stick out from my chest on the underside almost the width of my palms. This made suit jacket lapels lay badly. I tended to wear 3 piece suits for business as the vest smoothed things out so the jacket would fit better. I always needed to buy custom tailored suits because off the rack ones just didn’t fit. Those always expected one’s waist to be 6 inches smaller than the chest. The “athletic” cut suits allowed for 8 inch drop. My waist was always 12-16 inches smaller.
Since the questionnaire here asked breast size I decided to measure for the first time. They were larger than I would have estimated, largely because of the illusion of size caused by having a large chest underneath them. I’ve never had any doubt or had to ask “Is this the dreaded gynecomastia?” It was as plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face. These breasts are quite impossible to hide. An interesting illusion is that looking at me in context they look smaller than my partner’s breasts. However she has a 34 inch chest and mine is 52 inches so hers look much larger in comparison to her body. She likes mine just fine. My wife of 3 decades liked them but was jealous that they were larger and better shaped than her kind of pointy A cup breasts.
I can also pass the pencil test, under the breasts; the undersides of my breasts don’t touch down when standing. Before I became very ill and put on 100+ pounds of water plus some fat, my waist was 34 inches at 175 pounds and my chest size was 48 inches. My breast size then was about the same as now, 36 years later. Being ill much of my life, I missed 1/3 of school year from k-college. I was given all sorts of drugs. Looking at the lists of drugs that can cause gynecomastia I often was taking several at a time. Currently I’m taking levothyroxin, furosimide, morphine, occasional diazepam or lorazepam and testosterone as mine went through the floor with the methylb12 deficiency as with so many people. As my breasts were already quite large I certainly didn’t worry about the drugs. Most of the doctors I’ve seen shy away from the whole gynecomastia business. I’ve noticed a lot of doctors don’t handle body issues well. They have their own. As Dr Yost also had gynecomastia one can see how he developed an interest in this instead of the avoidance we usually see. I can see that the various docs certainly do notice but virtually none say anything. The most they ever say is “Have there been any changes?” There have never been any for sure changes. However in looking back at a picture from before I lost the 85 pounds of water I see that I had bloat in the chest and breasts as well. Everything looks different by comparison when one’s stomach is blown up big and hard like a basketball with fluid and all tissues are bloated with water. At the worst the top of my thigh muscle was no thicker than my thumb but you would never know looking at me as my whole body looked fat and bloated. The water came off quickly in two segments after certain nutritional changes each time. I also lost another 40+ pounds of fat and put on most of it again as muscle as I rehabilitated in the last 5 years with all the missing nutrients. Since losing the water and fat and building muscle my breasts stick out farther than my stomach as well as the bloated tissue around them retreating.
My first experience with body harassment goes back to age 5-6 at day camp. There I was harassed about penis size. That’s weird considering the normal size of little boy’s penises in general. That was by another 5-6 year old. I wonder what his problem was. I was entirely of normal weight at age 5. My mother rushed me off to the doctor who pronounced my penis entirely average for that age. However the doctor explained to her that I had a pubic fat pad into which my penis could entirely disappear. That characteristic has been called “northern horse barbarian penis”; you can’t leave descendents if your penis freezes off riding a horse in extremely cold weather. However, that word “fat” was the killer. My mother was anorexic and had OCD. Instead of accepting that I had a normal penis and that was the end of that she became obsessed with the fat pad. She determined I had to lose enough weight for it to go away.
A few years later she developed postpartum depression with a miscarriage and 8 months after that had her first psychotic episode with the second miscarriage. She systematically started changing my diet, restricting meat severely and other foods, especially animal protein foods, also, and hence restricting my b12 intake. She projected her anorexia onto me. Instead of losing weight I gained weight on the new diet plan. I know now that the nutrition changes exasperated my genetic problems with b12 and vegetable folate (causes paradoxical folate deficiency in me) and caused me to pack on water, bloating me up rapidly which caused her to restrict my diet even more severely causing even more bloating. I also developed the habit of over-eating whenever I wasn’t under her control as I felt like I was starving (I was, especially for methylb12, adensosylb12 and methylfolate). She made sure I knew how shameful my body was because I was so “fat”. She made sure that I knew how shameful my WHOLE body was and that it wasn’t fit to be seen by anybody. So when my breasts grew starting at 11 she became my number one worst enemy. She appeared to think that I was growing them deliberately to irritate her. She was sure I was out to get her. She had been trying to get doctors to medicate me into submission since I stopped her from physically abusing me in 3rd grade. When I was 5 she had the doctor medicate me because I wasn’t able to naturally sleep as long as she thought I ought to, about 12 hours. I didn’t have trouble sleeping, I just had trouble falling asleep by 7 pm. I had at least as much embarrassment and shame about my stomach as about my breasts. Her psychosis took 100% of family resources. Whenever anybody else’s problems started getting some attention she self injured. “Don’t upset your mother” became the rule of the house and she ruled the house with her upsets.
Junior high school was hell. There was one boy who went around sticking pins into my breasts and rear end, and those of some of the large breasted girls, to “pop your balloons”. In the crowds of the hallways nobody ever caught him in the act though we all knew who was doing it. The school did nothing as nobody actually ever saw him do it but he was ALWAYS in position to have done it. Gym class was a horror show with being marched through the showers and tossed a towel. My breasts were the talk of the school. They were bigger than those of most of the girls. The good side of that was I started getting offers from the girls of the “you can see/feel mine if I can see/feel yours” after school. I enjoyed those offers but getting passed such invitations in study hall was terrifying. If caught the note would have been read out loud. In high school the locker room was hell and I was constantly harassed. Somebody who did darkroom work took nude photos of me in the shower, made hundreds of copies and passed them around the school and some other schools. This was 62-66. College was no better except for girls. I started going out with the founder of the school nudist club. I took up skiing in high school and continued in college, became a ski instructor and later a professional patrolman. That was more my style of dress, lots of bulky clothing.
The last two years of college we had a two week nudist camp session at my mother’s summer place (she was hospitalized a lot at that time and wasn’t there) on a lake in Maine and invited friends from school, brothers and sisters and their boyfriends/girlfriends. We could sleep at least 21 with every bed, hide-a-bed and roll-a-way filled. It was great. We spent most of every day nude; swimming, water-skiing, fishing, canoeing and games in front of a fire for warmth each evening. It was the first time I was nude almost all the time for 2 weeks with a group of mixed gender people and nobody at all paid any attention what so ever to my breasts or cared in any way. It was a most excellent experience.
A few years later I was broadsided by a red light runner and my back was broken in 3 places and nerve damage in my back. From there on out it was one health matter after another, including ballooning to 325 pounds, much of it water, with congestive heart failure and massive vitamin deficiency diseases. That was absolutely horrid, getting that “look” and comments under the breath at the supermarket when buying food or ordering dessert when eating out, for instance, from people who assumed “out of control eating” and making “moral” judgments. That was as bad as or worse than anything having to do with the gynecomastia. When faced with life threatening problems, almost no exposure (largely housebound for decades) the whole body issue thing, and especially gynecomastia, largely lost its charge because it wasn’t stimulated. In the 90s, as a bucket list type thing (I was dying) I started going to nudist clubs with my wife (yup, from college). In the meantime I had become a tantric alchemist. I engaged in the spiritual work; enlightenment meditations, etc, transforming the self, learning how to die and all that good stuff. I also engaged in “tantric sex” becoming proficient with loads of mystical experiences. Along the way I became a mystically initiated priest of Goddess. If you look at Tarot cards many decks have the Alchemist pictured with breasts and an erection. It is said to symbolize the alchemical marriage in which a person unites their female and males halves. I do some Goddess circles and I am willing to work “sky clad” (nude) or otherwise painted or costumed (typically mythical costuming), as desired, for the rituals.
My alchemical partner and I are members of a nudist club and spend a lot of time during the summer at the club where we have a full season RV. At any nudist club, one sees quite a few men with gynecomastia to some degree or another. It’s as common and normal as the statistics indicate. Among nudists, breasts, or lack thereof, on any body, are a complete non issue. There are women walking around with single or double mastectomies, with various stages and types of reconstruction or none at all. They don’t have to hide their “shame” of BREAST cancer and BREAST surgery as I have heard it expressed by some textile compulsives. The hostility towards the body in general in this American society is huge. I can’t help but believe that this body fear and hate can affect our health.
There is a lot of fat at the nudist clubs too, more than anybody actually wants but then, that is a problem of our times. Almost half the folks in American society are fatter than they would prefer up to obese. As the statistics tell us almost half of men may have enlarged breasts to some degree or another at some time in their life. This sounds pretty “normal” to me when it affects about half the population or half the male population, almost the definition of normal as in “common” or “typical”. “Normal” isn’t necessarily healthy or desirable, just common. Borderline methylb12/adenosylb2 deficiencies are “normal” in American society. Because gynecomastia is hidden and “shameful” everybody thinks they are almost alone in it which makes it all the more traumatic. I went through that hell for years and know it all too well.
When I went to work on body-issues/body-shame I got rid of it across the board. I wasn’t going to try to pick and choose what to keep, if that is even possible. Why keep any of it? Without the underlying function of body-shame() in the first place I’m not sure that body-shame(breasts) is a supported function, at least alchemically speaking, in remaking the self. Bullies and the like strike out when they go for a trigger if it isn’t there. They might still be annoying but that isn’t the same thing. So when a lady at a local public pool (in Utah) a few years ago said “You shouldn’t be allowed to exhibit yourself to children like that. I’d call the police if it would do any good” and pointing at my breasts. I told her to come to a nudist club and take off her bathing suit and we could all take a good look at what she is hiding of her body. She went away sputtering. If she saw my breasts in their currently shaved condition she would be positively apoplectic. I have to say that I still don’t recognize myself in the mirror with my chest and stomach smooth and hairless after 40 years of being covered in hair, getting denser each year. It actually caught me by surprise to see my breasts without a mat of hair, which had increased quite a bit since the picture that I posted taken about 6 years ago. I really had looked shaggy before I shaved. It took more than a month to get used to being shaved pubicly so I would expect the same with this.
Topic: My life experiences and process leading to acceptance of breasts, part 1 (Read 9636 times)
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