#size obsession

[growth-opportunities]

Size greed is never satisfied. Once it takes root in your mind and burrows itself to the core of your being, you stop thinking of it as a desire to be big. The desire has warped and twisted itself and now it's not enough to be "big". You need to be bigger.

Always bigger.

The first time you outgrow a bra, it's an intoxicating feeling. Seeing yourself bulge over the cups, feeling the straps sink deep into your shoulders, the struggle to clasp it shut behind your back or, God forbid, the feeling of defeating the clasp and having the entire bra burst open. That kind of euphoria, that pure erotic bliss, is as overwhelming as it is addicting. Inside that growth is intense satisfaction. Yes! You tell yourself. I did it! I used to fit in this bra and now it can't hold me back! Nothing can hold me back!

And you'll keep chasing that high, that intense, concentrated arousal forever. You need to outgrow bras and shirts and jackets and sweaters, anything that might contain them proven increasingly inadequate.

You'll do anything to make yourself bigger. You'll change your diet. You'll change your routines. Pills that promised growth made you roll your eyes before but now they tempt you, your heart racing and your body flushing at the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they might work and you'll grow even more.

For some, the desire to be bigger will start to bleed over into areas. You'll long for your hips to be wider, your ass to be fatter, rounder, softer. You'll ache for the feeling of destroying a pair of jeans the same way you destroyed your bra. And even when you get there, it's never enough. Even when you sit down and your hips spread out and you hear the sound of rending fabric as the seam splits, shame and arousal coursing through your growing body, all it will do is drive you deeper into chasing that growth. You'll do anything to get bigger. Being big isn't enough.

You need to be bigger.

No matter the cost.

No matter what it does to you.

No matter how it changes your wardrobe, your reputation, your life.

It's not enough to be big.

You need to be bigger.

[growth-opportunities]

The "Alphabet Run" was the gold standard of speed swellers, women who would push their gifts of growth to the limits and get as big as fast as they can. While a sub-90 second time to add 26 inches to their bust line has long been theorized and planned by the community, it has only been recently that someone has pulled it off.

Devon squared up against Alyssa, alcohol still strong on both their breaths. Lightning arced between their gaze, but neither of them blinked.

"I'm so fucking sick of hearing this! So what if I'm already a G cup! That doesn't fucking mean anything!" Devon stuck out her chest, pressing her breasts against Alyssa's As. "I can still compete! I can kick your ass any day of the fucking week!"

Alyssa's eyes narrowed, her lips twisting into a haughty smirk. "Listen, freshman. I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. No one naturally bigger than a C cup has ever placed competitively. Breast, ass, or any other category! And don't say Cooper Bering. You know as well as I do the only reason she placed is because the entirety of the Green City Growers was disqualified because they got caught using Prolactidine. And she still only got third!" She poked a single finger into the side of Devon's squished tit, the younger competitor trying to keep her fierce composure. "The point is, you used up all your growth potential, G Cup. You don't belong in this sport."

Embarrassment burned in Devon's cheeks and ears, her mind sputtering as she tried to figure out how to retort. The warmth only grew as her teammates stared at her, some with pity, some hoping she'd put Alyssa 'The Ass' (a nickname she earned not just for her primary event) LaRue in her place. Devon took a deep breath, holding it until she finally blurted out-

"Fuck you! I'll do an Under-90 Alphabet Run! Then maybe you'll finally shut the fuck up!"

Hushed whispers spread through the crowd. Alyssa took a second to register what Devon had said. When she did, she couldn't help a laugh. "You? The alphabet run? Yeah, and if you flap your arms hard enough, maybe you can make a cow fly!" Alyssa took a step back, slapping Devon's tit from underneath, making her yelp. "Fine, G Cup. You're on. You do an AR90, something no one has ever done successfully, even at a professional level, and I'll leave you alone. Hell, I'll make a public apology! But if you don't..." Alyssa's face took on a sinister expression. "Then you take your tits and get the fuck out of my sport. Forever."

The thought of giving up competitive growing, the sport she loved, made Devon pause, but she was too far gone. The die had been cast. She stood up straight and nodded her head. The crowd went wild.

"You're on."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The crowd was going wild, cheering Devon on as she raced through cup sizes. Even though she started at G, it was tradition for Alphabet Run attempts to be counted by observers by letter for every inch grown. The run ended at Z, but many people didn't make it that far.

"R!"

"S!"

"T!"

Alyssa was sweating. She tried to keep her focus on the stopwatch in her hands, but she couldn't keep her eyes off of Devon. The sheer size and heft of her breasts was nothing short of a miracle. Even without the seven cup head start, they were a sight to behold. Each one had to be bigger than both Devon's and her own heads combined!

"U!"

And they were still growing!

Alyssa swallowed. "Y-you'll never make it! You still have five cup sizes and only... Five seconds!"

Concentration twisted Devon's face. Her chest heaved. A deep breath rushed into her lungs and-

"GRRRAAAAAAGGHHH!!"

The crowd stopped counting, simply staring in awe as Devon's breasts surged in size. They looked more like they were inflating than growing. Devon arched har back, trying to push every last ounce of growth that she could into her tits. By the time they stopped, six full inches had been added to her already gargantuan bust. There was a half-second of awed silence before a ringing broke the trance.

Alyssa's timer.

Ninety seconds.

The crowd erupted, rushing in on Devon to celebrate her victory. The now exceedingly top-heavy woman staggered, suddenly feeling the weight of her enormous breasts sticking out more than a foot in front of her.

Alyssa just stood there with her jaw dropped open. Her whole worldview had been shattered. She should have been embarrassed at the loss but all she could think was Holy shit... We're gonna win every fucking trophy...

[carrie-fister]

Apparently Charlotte Russe jeans run so small I go from a size 0/1 to a 4 there. I am okay with this. Even if it’s a lie, I shall now tell people I’m a size 4 if asked. But why would anyone ask. Our society isn’t obsessed with weight and waist and pants size after all lol. And people totally don’t say I’m nothing or don’t exist or 0 isn’t a “real” size when I tell them lulz.

[feimineach]

The absurd, worrying world of Closer magazine

There is a serious point in among the whimsy, though: stories are not actually about the celebrities. They can be categorised into roughly three groups: bodies, food and relationships. In bodies, we learn that the ideal size to be is an 8. Women who fall below that size are said to be “gaunt”, and are usually mourning the end of a relationship. A 10 is acceptable but usually prefaced with the word “curvy”, as in “Amelia is a curvy size 10.” Women who are over that size will be dieting, and we will get a run-down of their meal plans, or indeed whether they’re eating at all. If they are over a size 12, then their “pals” are quoted, gleefully telling of how the woman in question cries every night over her size, or is disgusted with herself. Bodies intersect neatly with food. Carbohydrates are generally considered a bad thing, and menu recommendations inevitably focus on grilled fish or chicken with vegetables or salad. Then there will be one food item which creeps in several times per issue, being hyped either by celebrities or by the magazine itself, the magic weight loss food which will attain you that desirable size 8 figure. It was seaweed in the first issue, Marmite in the next. More worrying are the constant articles on “baby weight” – the obsession with the perfect and desirable body extends to pregnancy, and I’ve learned through reading these that there is such a thing as a maternity monokini, and also that people plan a birth outfit. Once they’ve “flaunted” the bump (there’s a lot of flaunting in these mags), given birth while wearing that fabulous birth outfit, they must lose the baby weight. We’re told approvingly that one woman was back to a size 6 two weeks after the birth. Women who don’t lose the weight quickly will “admit” to losing it slowly, and again these horrible “pals” will be quoted saying that the woman in question is distraught by the weight and hint darkly at depression. With friends like that, eh?

[Read more: guardian]

[feimineach]

Women's magazines

Many of the magazines offer advice to readers to love their body. But how is a woman to love her body when she reads on almost every page that size 12 Kerry is revolted by her weight and is dieting furiously, while “pals” of the size 8 celebrities tell how much more happy, fulfilled, sexually successful and generally all-round chuffed they are with their shapes? When she reads that a celebrity who was 10 stone had weight loss surgery (liposuction)? Almost every story in the celebrity ‘news’ part contains a casual reference to the woman’s dress size. A little like the Mail’s ability to put a house price into every story, Closer gets a dress size in there. “Alicia, a svelte size 10, did XYZ…” Outside the obsession with weight there’s hardly a more woman-friendly overview. Women who have broken a relationship off are inevitably “heartbroken” whilst women who have just begun one are either “besotted” or planning a baby. Any woman who has “hung onto her man” for more than a few months begins to look “broody,” and her “pals” will tell of how she desperately wants a baby. Once any baby is born, columns are devoted to how quickly or slowly the woman is able to shed the baby weight, and which exercise plan or diet regime they followed to do so. Women who are “back in their pre-pregnancy jeans” quickly are spoken of with approval, while women who are not suffer more of their “pals” explaining how revolting they find themselves. [Read more thefword]

[feimineach]

Uncomfortable in our skin: the body-image report

Long but good read.

Even researching such a thing is tricky. The truth feels slippery. “Why,” I asked the psychotherapist Susie Orbach (who, since publishing Fat is a Feminist Issue in 1978, has become a loud and public voice in the conversation about body image), “when I know that beauty is subjective, that nothing terrible would happen if I put on weight, when my desk is covered in annotated research on bodies, do I still feel bad about the way I look?” “Because none of us lives in a vacuum,” she said. Simply acknowledging the pressure doesn’t eliminate it. “We don’t even know we hate our bodies because we take that for granted.” She sighed. “When I wrote FiFi there was a pretty bad situation,” she said, “but the women of my generation have given birth to… this.” To my generation – 60% of whom feel ashamed of how they look. But before anybody begins to deal with this, this crippling western-worldwide anxiety, it’s important to try and work out why. How did we get here?

[Read more: guardian]