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By Rebecca, May 18, 2011 2:17 pm

You don't need me to find a topless woman for you...

My roommates and I moved a fridge last night and felt very proud of ourselves. Our landlords were getting rid of their fridge and gave it to us (since it wasn’t really very old), but only had the moving guys bring it up to our sunroom. So one door-removed-from-the-hinges-to-fit-the-fringe-through-later, we have a shiny, huge new fridge. That isn’t really relevant to this post, other than I’m excited about it and the fridge-moving immediately preceded a conversation I had with my two roommates about being topless.

Our apartment has central heat and air, but we try not to overly rely on them in the interests of keeping our energy costs low. So there’s usually a few weeks of the summer where, with fans on and windows open, the apartment is livable, even though it gets pretty hot when you try to go to sleep. We had one of those evenings a few weeks ago (yes, in Chicago it can go from being almost 90 to barely 50 in the span of a week) and I ended up sleeping topless. Which made me come to the conclusion that I should be allowed to be topless in my own apartment.

I am not a stranger to discussing and thinking about toplessness, but this is the first time I have made a concrete decision about a specific space in my life where I think I should be allowed to be topless. I actually realized that being topless would make me feel good, both physically and emotionally. (Insert comments about exhibitionism here, if you must.) I’d talked with one of my roommates about this that very hot weekend, and she said that she wouldn’t be joining me, but didn’t care if I bared my boobs. Last night, I asked my other roommate if he was OK with me being topless in the apartment

He said ‘no.’

Continue reading 'So you can be topless but I can’t?'»

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By Rebecca, November 22, 2010 1:07 am

Earlier tonight (Sunday night), I performed at the Chicago Fringe Binge, a fundraiser and publicity event for the 2011 Chicago Fringe Festival. There was a carnival theme, and lots of fun (and silly) events and booths. I had a booth about what it meant to be a boy or a girl, which drew some great comments – I’ll post ‘em later this week. I was one of a few people performing little bits of shows, as part of the push to get people to come to Chicago Fringe 2011. I did a new piece, something I hadn’t performed before, in which I ended up topless.

Continue reading 'Performing topless: terrifying and empowering'»

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By Rebecca, August 31, 2010 1:44 pm

Obligatory plug: Uncovering the Mirrors opens tomorrow! Get your tickets today!

In other news, this link has been sitting in my ‘drafts’ folder for a while while. Jezebel had a post on “Boob jobs that don’t involve actual boob jobs,” including

That seems like a reasonable claim to make...

There’s also bras and bra inserts, hypnotism, and “boob slapping.” Good stuff.

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By Rebecca, April 29, 2010 12:37 am

Pretend you can see my dad!

My father marched at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He went to Washington to see Dr. King speak. His work as a defense attorney has helped demonstrate the unjustness of the death penalty and his was one of the cases referenced by Gov. Ryan when he issued a moratorium against capital punishment. In my mind, I still sometimes imagine my dad like I did when I was ten: the Good Lawyer protecting the innocent from Evil Cops, fighting for Civil Rights and Other Important Issues Warranting Capitalization.

Life rarely that simple. Family certainly isn’t.

There was a slowly dawning sense of discomfort during my teenage years, as I started to notice the times my dad would talk about clients he knew were guilty but would receive reduced sentences based on police misconduct. Now, to be perfectly clear, I think police misconduct is almost always a greater societal problem than the guilty person getting a break. Better ten guilty men go free, and all that. I still believe my dad is one of the Good Guys, and that even the guiltiest among us deserves fair and competent counsel. But my dad is also a more nuanced and complicated individual than I as able to acknowledge as a child.

Still, I sometimes expect him to see all civil rights and justice issues the way I do. Which made speaking with him tonight something like banging my head against a wall. The discussion began, as so many do, with talk of breasts.

Continue reading 'Banging my head against a wall'»

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By Rebecca, December 31, 2008 1:21 am

(Yet again, if you don’t care about how my boobs are doing you probably don’t need to read this post…)

So I sucked it up today and went to Victoria’s Secret where I learned a few things. Again, we’ll do bad news first.

The bad news is that the bras I got are, ultimately, uncomfortable and a bit too small, so will need to be returned. Specifically, the end of the underwire, between the cups, digs into my sternum rather painfully, and they’re all already stretched on the last set of hooks.

The good news is that I was sized at Victoria’s Secret and apparently my own guess of 38A wasn’t horrible, but I forgot that that also means 36B and 34C, which is how they ultimately sized me. So, armed with that knowledge, I am now more confident in my ability to find a bra (or, dare I say, bras) that fit me, get me out of the sports bras I’ve been wearing for a year, and are actually comfy.

The bonus good news is that, even with feeling a little bummed that the stuff I spent money on needs to be returned (and the friends I’ve talked to tonight ultimately said “Oh, I’m not a huge van of Victoria’s Secret’s bras…”), I was able to do it without having a panic attack and I went to Old Navy and got some tops and khakis I like and I got my hair cut today and like that, too.

As I said to some friends, I think spending all that money on clothing and hair and enjoying it means I’m suffering from estrogen poisoning, but I aint’ complaining…

-R

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By Rebecca, December 24, 2008 4:27 pm

Which do you want first? We’ll do bad news first. (You should probably stop reading at this point if you don’t really care about my boobs.)

The bad news is my torso is apparently too large and my boobs too small to fit the straps and cups of the largest/smallest bra Target sells (36A).

The good news is that some creative scissoring meant the padded cups from the ill-fitting bras have allowed me to expand my bust considerably, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more.

The bonus good news is I just went out boot shopping, was ma’amed, and no one blinked as I was trying on women’s shoes. The cashier did pause for a second when seeing the name on my credit card, but she didn’t give me any trouble (and it could have been my imagination to begin with).

EDIT: The bonus bad news is that putting padding in a bra without padding inserts causes the wearer to develop mondo uni-boob after a few hours. (Who knew?)

The double-bonus good is it still made me feel better about myself for a little while.

-R

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By Rebecca, July 23, 2008 1:21 am

What a change from Sunday, eh?

At work, I told the admin assistant not to come in because she was sick. I then left to go to the workshop, and everything sort of fell apart, culminating in one of my bosses threatening to fire the admin assistant. (No one was fired, fortunately.) This morning we had a Meeting with both of my bosses, the admin assistant, and myself. While I’m still not happy how my boss handled things (threatening the admin assistant’s job was way out of proportion for what had happened) my bosses had really valid points about how I and the admin assistant had let the office slip over the past couple of months. They did manage to say a few things we’re doing well, and I do know that this isn’t the end of the world and it’s a learning experience and all that mumbo-jumbo that will make me feel better a month from now. But, for right now, I had my nose rubbed in a number of things that are ligitimately my fault, as well as a few that aren’t (but are difficult to extract from the lump of things that have gone wrong).

(Amazingly enough, getting that all out helped a little….need to just keep reminding myself that things will look better – or, at least, less bad – with every passing day.)

I’m also frustrated because I wanted to be able to focus on this workshop, and not on my job. But that’s kind of difficult, now. I’m still trying, but I know I’m bad at compartmentalizing and the stress about work is definitely spilling over into feelings of inadequacy as a performer and as an artist. (Not to mention as a woman…) I realized today that I’m uncomfortable as J and as R. For example, this morning, in the Meeting, I was feeling awkward in boymode because of my boobs and how I was sitting and wondering how obvious it was that I was wearing a bra. Then, during the workshop (in girlmode) I was feeling awkward becuase of my boobs and how I was sitting and wondering if I looked like a boy who was feeling awkward about his boobs. I knew this before, but never quite in such stark relief…

(Thinking happy thoughts. Thinking happy thoughts. Thinking happy thoughts.)

(Trying to, anyway…)

-R

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By Rebecca, June 17, 2008 4:11 am

Obviously, it’s not a contest. But damn if it doesn’t seem that way when she’s right and I’m wrong…

So the first one is about clothing, the most mundane (and yet oh-so-important) of things. L was saying I needed to just go to Target, where no one would care what I was looking at or trying on, and get something. I was whining and backpedaling and letting fear of embarasment keep me from doing it. See, among other things, I really don’t like to feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. And buying women’s clothing? I don’t know what I’m doing.

But I finally got up my courage and went to Target. (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write…) After putting off the women’s clothing section by looking at all the cool Lego Star Wars toys and the GPS systems and the make-your-own-ice-cream things, I finally meandered slowly past the clothing section. I felt like a bad spy in a satire, where if no one notices the spy before they try to ‘sneak,’ everyone damn sure will after.

Then I lost my nerve and went next door to Office Max, hating myself all the way. Continue reading 'Therapist: 2 – Me: 0'»

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By Rebecca, June 14, 2008 3:41 am

(Apologies for the pun in the title…)

While on the El yesterday two black girls got on the Red Line around Argyle, heading north. They were both in their late teens/early twenties, dressed to enjoy Chicago’s at-long-last nice weather. One of them was smoking when she got on, and turned to the closed door to take one last puff and throw the cigarette to the ground, stepping on it and extinguishing it.

The two girls continued to stand in the door, chatting, when someone across from them – an older white man – got up and moved to the other end of the car. The girl who was smoking took offense to this, and started speaking loudly at his back as he walked away: “Oh, so you don’t like the smell of smoke? Well, my pussy smells better than you, you ass! Yeah, that’s right, you better walk away!”

I was playing around on my phone (oh, the joy of a phone with Internet…) but looked up at her during her little tirade. We locked eyes. And I, conciously ignoring the decorm of the El (and public places in general) held that eye contact. Continue reading 'A racey experience'»

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By Rebecca, June 12, 2008 3:26 am

I was recently accepted into a mentorship program with a gay performance artist (he’s the mentor) and two other mentees, with the goal of developing queer solo performance. (As the title indicates, I’m excited about this, but also somewhat terrified…) Anyway, I thought I’d share my application, somewhat edited to remove some identifying information

Why Solo Performance?
When I was thirteen I crept into my parent’s room and tried on my mom’s black one-piece bathing suit, inflating my flat chest with socks and tucking my penis between my legs. Had I been asked, had a surprised family member burst in and wondered what the hell I thought I was doing, I could not have provided a good answer. Ten years later, now one year into hormone replacement therapy and exploring the identities of ‘transgender,’ ‘transsexual,’ ‘lesbian,’ and ‘queer,’ I no longer need to stuff my bra with socks but I am still searching for an answer to that most powerful of questions: What the hell do I think I am doing? Continue reading 'I have to perform, like, in public?'»