Boobies. YAAAAAAY! By and large, boobs are pretty cool. At their most basic they are life-giving nutritional staples for baby humans, lactate nectar from our mommies. At their most complicated, they are the double-barreled sawed off shotgun of a woman’s arsenal, easily concealed if necessary and yet ready to be deployed as an Optimum Sexual Arousal Device whenever necessary. This second use takes some practice and finessing (basic life skills have taught us that straight up whipping them out is not only too overt, but also socially unacceptable), which is easier when you can produce cleavage as quickly and easily as Michael Bay produces shitty action films. But what of the tiny-titted in this world? What is it like to navigate the human race knowing fairly early on that you were not blessed with the weapons that, like a very large gun, when put in someone’s face will probably get them to do what you ask? Let me proudly stand up and proclaim that I am just the person to offer a glimpse into the disadvantaged life of the small breasticled.

Dresses don’t fit. When it comes to wearing dresses it’s like the world is saying to us, “You haven’t earned the right to dress nicely. Go put on a pair of jeans and a band t-shirt from Hot Topic.” Strapless dresses are right out, unless your goal is to flash people fairly early in the evening. Which it might be; no judgment here. Low-cut dresses introduce the same general problem, because if you don’t have boobs to hold the dress taut to your body, then leaning over to dish yourself some green bean casserole at Aunt Marcia’s Christmas Dinner really just means giving your twelve-year-old male cousin his first glimpse of the female nipple. You can buy all the boob tape your little heart desires; nothing will adequately hide the fact that when you wear a v-neck dress you look like a junior higher that just raided her mom’s closet. Upside: never in my life have I busted a button.

You can never let anyone see you lay down. As if standing up and taking advantage of Our Friend Gravity weren’t futile enough, laying on your back when you have small boobs just means subjecting any onlookers to the supple anatomy of an adolescent boy as your boob material (Boob filling? Boob innards? Boob stuffing?) squooges over into your armpits and disappears, hiding out until you force it into existence again by either standing up or physically pushing everything together with your hands. Upside: stomach sleeping ain’t no thang.

Bra shopping. It’s probably safe to say that for any female, regardless of chest size, bra shopping is near the top of the Totally Horrendous Life Experiences list, right up there with your first break-up and any time Stephen Baldwin is on your TV screen. But as an active card-carrying member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee, I like to think we’ve got it rougher than most. This isn’t so much because finding a bra that fits is hard (we just gravitate toward the beginning of the alphabet) but more because the shopping process is an emotionally scarring experience that forces us to look at our bare chests in a giant mirror in a brightly lit dressing room and say to ourselves, “Well, I guess God just doesn’t like you very much.” It also means listening to the D-cup chicas in the in the rooms next to us say things like “Oh my God my cleavage is just too big, boys are going to try to throw popcorn in there!” as we silently seethe in anger. Upside: we don’t buy bras to give support and prevent back strain; we just buy them to keep the nipples in check.

Boys. Any boy that tells you he “likes ‘em small” is a filthy liar. They might think they do, but if given the choice between losing himself in a motorboating sesh for an hour and poking around trying to find where the ribs end and the boob starts, you can bet your last taco he’d pick the former. Nothing can change this; it’s a product of the evolutionary process, or Freudian psychoanalytics, or some other lame ass justification I don’t really buy into. Try as we might to perform the push-and-lift with our arms crossed in front of us atop a table on a date or with a group of friends (one of whom you’re trying to get in the sack), we just end up looking like we’re trying to smuggle clementines across the border.  Word to the wise: don’t ever use the word “cute” to describe our boobs. Ever. Your three-year-old niece is cute. Your miniature schnauzer Snowball is cute. Otters in top hats are cute. Upside: None. We cannot win.

–Katie Sisneros is totally comfortable with herself. Really.