11.

THE BUILD-A-BOOB WORKSHOP

Yesterday, the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Today, the Build-A-Boob Workshop.

How much can one mom take?

“We were just there,” I say wistfully to my daughter, hoping she’ll turn and look where I’m pointing in the mall—two stores down and eleven years back in time. “You were staring through the Build-A-Bear window, begging for tiny pink outfits for a little teddy bear!”

My daughter isn’t turning and looking.

“Remember?” I say, smiling warmly, hoping to draw her back to the hundreds of precious hours we spent holding hands in this mall, browsing for dreams, negotiating her childhood. “Remember how you cried and cried when I wouldn’t buy that last little pink tutu for your bear because you didn’t make your bed all week?”

She isn’t remembering, isn’t smiling, isn’t drawn back.

She’s in a teen trance, staring through the extremely different store window in front of us at tiny pink outfits for extremely grown-up humans. This isn’t the first time we’ve been here, but it never, ever gets easier. I reach out to put a hand on her shoulder to remind her how deeply we’re still connected . . . but before my hand can land, my baby rushes away from me, through the store door, into the arms of a mostly naked mannequin.

Come back! I silently scream after her. I’ll buy you the tutu for the bear! I’ll make your bed for you for the rest of your life! JUST STEP AWAY FROM THE HOT PINK PADDED PUSH-UP POWER BRA WITH MATCHING MAGENTA MICRO-THONG!!!

I would be screaming out loud and hauling her to the exit except she’s nineteen. I can’t lift her. Also, there’s that preparing-to-be-deserted, pre-grieving-mom part of me that’s just so grateful to still be included in anything. Even if what she’s dreaming of decorating today is as far from a teddy bear as my mortified mom-brain can imagine.

She wouldn’t have heard me anyway. She’s already turned from the mannequin and is under the spell of a Victoria’s Secret Sales Hottie. A Sales Hottie holding out a giant black mesh bag she wants to help my baby fill with “Cu-u-ute!” things more provocative than my wedding lingerie. Nothing, absolutely nothing, a mother can hold out at this point to compete with that.

“What size boobs do you want?”

The Sales Hottie doesn’t actually use those words, but that’s what she means.

In this bustling fantasyland, one can turn perfectly nice, God-given As into sassy Cs. Lovely Bs can become dramatic Ds. The alphabet can go on and on . . .

I look at my grown-up little girl gazing at the Sales Hottie with the same sparkly, believing eyes that used to gaze upon Snow White at Disneyland. I try to comprehend how this is happening. It isn’t just the shock that she grew up. It isn’t just the grief that the world lost its innocence and modesty right when my baby’s launching into her first fragile years of womanhood. It isn’t just the guilt that my generation of women is the first in history to have the freedom and resources to point our daughters in a whole new direction and that our daughters are choosing to rush en masse to sexy lingerie.

Well, yes. Actually, it is sort of that last one. I have enough on me without also having to feel responsible for helping create the freedom for my little angel to think it’s a statement of self-worth to spend $70 on a bra that makes her look like the other kind of “angel,” the one in a lingerie catalog. All those years she curled up on my lap at bedtime, the thousands of times I whispered to her sweet, sleepy head as I kissed her good night that anything was possible . . . was I supposed to be more specific?

I try to find a place to stand. Too close and I humiliate her. Too far away and I humiliate myself by appearing to be shopping for something for me. There’s absolutely no direction I can look without making eye contact with the fact that life as I knew it is over.

The Hottie is pulling out enhancement choices, as if the only universal wish is for bigger. There isn’t one bra on display that doesn’t embellish someone’s size and make the shopper, at least subconsciously, feel that exactly who she is isn’t enough. This is not what my proud generation meant by a woman having more choices.

The Hottie is demonstrating to my baby that she can not only pick what size and shape she’d like her womanhood to be, but exactly where on her chest she’d like to position it. This is not what we meant by options!

The Hottie is showing her how to make her own powerful personal statement by changing the angle of the flirty straps in back so she can change the angle of the flirty situation in front—as though nothing my generation said about a woman not being defined and valued by the size of her cleavage got through. As though enough of a woman’s money and brainpower doesn’t already get wasted trying to get a guy’s attention.

I shut my eyes for a minute to regroup. I try to erase the memory of all the money and brainpower I’ve wasted trying to get a guy’s attention. I try to eradicate all memory of all men.

And yet who can stand here in this underwear emporium, surrounded by these sultry getups, and not think of men? Provocative scenarios start racing through my mind:

What if men had a store full of the equivalent of padded push-up bras for their manhood and peer pressure from their entire generation to shop there? Hah.

What if most of men’s clothes were designed for their manhood to peek out a little bit and men had to spend time each day recalculating which piece of their underwear wardrobe would reveal the appropriate amount of themselves to everyone at the office, PTA meetings, and church? Hah.

What if a man with the equivalent of a God-given A bought lingerie that made him the illusion of a dramatic D, and then got to the part of the evening where he was supposed to take his clothes off???? HAH!

“You look all sweaty, Mom,” my daughter says, glancing over from the Bombshell Bra—Adds Two Cup Sizes! she’s squishing between her fingers like Play-Doh.

“Yes, well, I was just . . .” I start to answer, but never mind. She doesn’t want to hear my fantasies any more than I want to hear hers. We’re honoring the Mother-Daughter Code of Silence today. She knows it’s best not to share how excited she is to be shopping for Really Big Girl Underwear. I know I can’t share how mortified I am that she’s doing it or any of my opinions about the cultural collapse I believe the entire women’s underwear industry represents.

Either truth would ruin what we have, which is this last little sliver of time on earth when she’s still young enough to want my approval almost as much as she wants my credit card. This sweet, aching time when she needs and wants me to give her permission to grow up.

I’ve spent nineteen years arming my daughter with a sense of self-esteem built on the values of hard work, integrity, and kindness. I enshrined every good report card on the refrigerator door, recorded every heroic science fair effort. I wept at the dance recital when, after four years of trying, she was finally brave enough to tiptoe onto the stage. I showered her with praise the day she wrapped a favorite doll to give to a sick neighbor, cheered and cheered the day she made the honor roll.

The Sales Hottie has spent thirty seconds teaching her how to make her boobs double in size.

My daughter likes the Hottie more than she likes me now. She’d go home with her if she could. The Hottie is not all awkward and weird like I vowed I wouldn’t be but still am. The Hottie feels no need to pair each bra with a speech about how women foster sexism with the mix’n’match messages they wear. She announces style numbers into her magic headset in a loud, nonconflicted voice, summons miracles from the secret back room, pulls non-God-given cleavage out of cute little drawers.

I hate her.

I try to peek around to see if there are any kindred spirits in the store, but I still don’t want to look as if I’m looking at anything, so I peek out the sides of my eyes without actually moving my eyes to the sides, which must make me appear even more insane than I feel. So often all I’m ever searching for at the mall is someone like me. Someone who matches me.

ISN’T THERE ANYONE IN THIS STORE WHOSE INNER CONFLICT IS THE SAME SIZE AS MINE??! I fought for a universe in which women aren’t sexually repressed, but I didn’t mean THIS. I prayed my daughter would have a healthy body image, but I didn’t mean in THAT. I rally against . . .

“Mom, will you come in the dressing room with me?”

Everything stops.

I’ve been invited into the Room.

I turn toward my daughter and nod quickly, too moved to speak. I follow silently, winding past displays and, finally, through the Door. I watch the Sales Hottie take my little girl’s fantasies out of her giant black mesh bag and display them on the wall. I watch my daughter lock the door after the Hottie leaves and turn to me with a nervous smile.

She wiggles into item number one and I instinctively reach to help. I look at my hands adjusting her lacy hot pink straps, and for a second I see my own mom’s hands—carefully sewing tiny loops in the shoulders of all my summer tops to save me from the embarrassment of someone accidentally seeing a tiny white bra strap. For another second, I’m back in a department store dressing room with Mom, way back when underwear was underwear, dying of embarrassment that my mother was even seeing me in a bra.

Could life be any different now? I watch my baby fuss with the tiny hooks and bows. It isn’t just my blessing she wants. She needs me to help her fit. Literally, help her fit into a world that’s as far away as I can imagine from the one in which I grew up. A world that seems so much more complicated and scary now that my generation has freed hers from the repressive rules that were so clear and so safe.

She turns to face the mirror.

Our eyes meet in her reflection. Hers are all sparkly, just like when she saw Snow White at Disneyland. Mine are so full of so much, I can hardly see.

All I can think is how much I wish we could go two doors down and build a bear.