For her senior project, Dallas Delaney starts Girls Shit Too, a series of vlogs inspiring girls to ditch the constraints of femininity and adopt the perks of masculinity. That's when another girl in her English class, Adree, uses her own online plat...
That night, after seeing Josh off to his party, my mom and my stepdad Roy and I decided to continue watching this old show on Amazon Prime, The White Queen.
The show had this sex scene where they showed Queen Elizabeth's boobs, and during the sex scene, to fill the awkward silence during which all of us wondered why we were watching a couple have sex together, Mom said, "They actually cast someone with mom boobs!" It seemed like she was right. Elizabeth had two sons before she met King Edward, so it would be pretty unrealistic if she didn't have mom boobs—the slightly deflated-looking boobs. Roy hated when mom and I used the word "deflated," but it had become one of our main boob descriptors.
"Now will you stop wanting a boob job?" Roy asked her.
"Nope. After I quit breastfeeding Jace, mine will still really sag in comparison to those."
"TMI, mom," I said, sick of hearing her talk about wanting a boob job. Why was she so concerned with the appearance of her breasts? Wasn't she, a grown woman with a loving spouse, supposed to be past that stage of insecurity?
"Don't tell your mother it's too much information; it's natural!" Roy said, defending her.
"Sorry Mom. Kidding. I think it's cool that they cast someone with mom boobs, too."
"Maybe you could do your project on how women shouldn't feel like they need to get plastic surgery and how they need to cast more actresses with things like mom boobs and pointy noses," Roy said.
"That's actually not a bad idea."
"Well, I think it's a bad idea," Mom said. "You can't comfortably say women shouldn't get plastic surgery until you lose that teenage body of yours. Then we'll see how you feel about it. But I guess we don't know if you're having kids anyway, right? So your body will last longer." Bitterness tinged her final words.
The fact that my body might "last longer" wasn't what made her bitter; she was bitter that I might not physically bear her grandchildren in my own, personal womb. I'd told her I might consider adopting someday and that I hadn't thought that hard about in vitro fertilization (I was only eighteen, after all), but I'd made it pretty clear I didn't think a child would ever come out of my vagina. I just didn't see that as my role in any relationship. That upset mom, and even though she tried to hide it sometimes, she would always bring it up using this super annoying, disappointed tone. Roy had stopped apologizing for her because he knew I knew he supported me.
"I'm sure Josh will give you grandkids, mom," I said. "Who knows? Maybe he'll make a baby tonight."
"The mother-in-law is never as close to the mom's children as her mother," she responded, obviously not worried about Josh and his nightly escapades (and she should have been...if we lived in an alternate reality where boys called each other sluts, Josh would have that designation for sure).
"I told you, I might adopt."
"It's not the same."
"I really just feel like I'm too young to have this conversation."
"You're eighteen. Time for children is closer than you think. Your biological clock is ticking."
"I'm gonna go brush my teeth."
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