"MY BEEPING BRA"
By Wendy Shanker * 6/16/06

I'm sitting here at the gate at the airport in the sixth city I've been to on a six-city book tour for The Fat Girl's Guide to Life.   That means it's the twelfth time that I've been stopped and patted down by airport security.

I'm not a security threat.   It's not that I wear a lot of jewelry.   I don't have a load of metal in my shoes (I wear slip-on sneakers when I fly – I've learned my lesson).   It's just that I have really big boobs, which require support from a really big bra with a really big underwire.   And so I beep, every single time.

The annoying thing is that I strip down like everyone else, remove every little bit of jewelry, check my pockets nine zillion times, and then warn the security officer as I'm going through the arch that I'm going to beep.   Then I go through the arch and beep.   He always says, “Go back through and try again, please.”   Which I do.   Then I beep again.   Before he ushers me back through a third time, I repeat, “I always beep.   It's my underwire in my bra.”   (One time a security guard nonchalantly replied, “Why? Because it's so big?”   As I laughed and said, “Uh, yeah!”   he turned a violent shade of purple embarrassment.)

When I beep the third time, the guard always shouts out “Female assist!”   Then I have to wait in this little barricaded area until a uniformed lady comes over to pat me down.   Each of these women have a slightly different system, but they always explain that they're going to wave their magic wands over me and when they hear a beep, they will pat down that area.   If it's a “sensitive” area, like my breasts for example, they will use the back of their hands to feel the area.   But what part of my body isn't “sensitive”?   Am I looking to be stroked across my fat belly by any stranger, let alone an anonymous TSA officer?   Was I hoping for a little rub on my rump from a complete stranger?   Of course, if I don't like this situation, I am free to be escorted to a secluded room where we can do the search in private. So I just let them do their thing.

The female agents are always respectful, and waste our time patting away like crazy on my arms and my legs as I face my belongings and explain over and over, “It's my underwire.   My underwire.”   Under their wands my underwire beeps like crazy, and I receive the least erotic second-base treatments imaginable as my boobs get nudged around by a rubber gloved back-of-hand.   Even seventh grade boy-girl parties were a bigger turn-on.   One agent was in training, and she did the whole sweep so slowly that my arms shook with exhaustion as I waited for her to finish.

Usually at some point during this charade I give up the fight and watch my belongings, hoping no one will grab my computer and run.   Or I observe an innocent grandparent, or a terrified child of six, who is also getting the pat down.

I idly wonder if these security agents have a better sense of body image than the rest of us do, by virtue of having touched all of those different bodies in such a clinical way.   All the rolls, all the bones, all the curves and angles hidden under our clothes.   All the stuff we try to hide when we get dressed in the morning.

I understand that this extra searching is a necessary evil in a post 9/11 world, and it just means a small inconvenience and some extra travel time built into my schedule.   But as I was molested all the way from Washington, DC to San Jose, I couldn't help but wonder if I was being discriminated against for the size of my giant boobs.

While big boobs are a prized purchase in our society, mine aren't big on purpose.   They are big by proportion – I am a fat woman and I have big fat boobies. They aren't fun, bouncy Pamela Anderson-looking numbers holding up my halter-top, either.   My bra is more like major scaffolding needed to support and constrain two melon-ious rascals who long to lay low and point south.   And a good bra – one that really gives me the support I need – costs me over $100.   (Imagine my horror at LAX, when I realized that I had left my sole white Prima Donna in my hotel room.   It would cost me $115 to replace it.   Can you get an insurance claim on these things?)

Besides the expense of my bras, and my momentary mammary disappointment every time I look at them and realize they aren't exactly babe material – more like bubbie material – there's also the myriad discomforts they cause me. It's hard to find clothes that are cut wide enough across the chest to cover me well. My back kills.   I let out a sigh every night when I de-strap from my big brassiere and gravity gives me a double tug.   I don't want to cut into my breasts to get them to a more convenient and comfortable size.   It's my body, and I respect it.   Still, I wish I didn't beep every goddamn time I fly.