To nip or not to nip

Thoughts on showing off your nipples

I like nipples. I like the look of them peeking through a bikini top. I take out the padding or buy a bathing suit without it. Sometimes I like to style my nipples like an accessory. I wear a bodysuit or fitted t-shirt with no bra. The shirt has to be just tight enough so that it keeps my breasts in place and gives them some subtle shape. You don’t want them just flopping around.

This is usually accompanied with jeans, air-dried hair, and no-makeup makeup, maybe a red lip. The look I’m trying to convey is “effortlessly sexy.” Like I just rolled out of bed, threw on a t-shirt and jeans, mused up my hair, smeared on some lipstick, and ran out the door. Couldn’t be bothered with a bra, and why would I? I’m a cool, confident woman. I like my body. The irony being that it took me over a decade to arrive at this look, to feel comfortable going braless in public, but more on that later. (Is anything truly ever “effortless”?)

I’ve been thinking about nipples a lot lately because of the success of SKIMS’ new bra with built-in nipples. It’s like the Victoria’s Secret bra I tried on 15 years ago that made me two cup sizes bigger and gave me nipples that reminded me of a Fembot in Austin Powers.

Both bras designed to make you look like you have big, perky breasts and hard nipples. The SKIMS Ultimate Nipple Push-Up Bra debuted on Kim Kardashian’s Instagram a few days before Halloween and sold out in less than two weeks. After trending on the runway and red carpet for about a year now, women in size 30 to 44, A to F confirmed that nipples are back (but does a body part ever go away?...).

I read some of the 132 reviews, and the overall theme was that this bra gives women the confidence that comes from having natural looking, shapely breasts. There were few reviews that really pulled on my heartstrings, like the woman who lost a nipple from an injury, the woman who always wanted to go braless but felt like she couldn’t because she has saggy breasts, and the many women who are mothers.

I get it. I think most of us are chasing some form of perfection idealized by society.

The first time I wore a fitted t-shirt with no bra, I stopped by Duane Reade to buy a tube of Icy Hot because my friend Vicki said that it would make your nipples hard. My nipples are not perennially hard. They usually hide, unless I’m cold or turned on. Since there was no guarantee that I’d be either, I discreetly rubbed the cream on them, while standing on the sidewalk. It was a bit of a gamble because the entire look was dependent on my nipples being hard. Had I been more of the planning type, which I wasn’t and likely never will be, I would have tested this out before.

The result was like when I was in middle school and started putting on makeup for the first time and thought it’d make me look just like the models in the magazine; it didn’t live up to my expectations. My nipples went from icy to hot, but they weren’t particularly hard or perky, like those in my memory of Molly, the first woman—well, she was a teenage girl actually—who I saw confidently showing off her nipples.

It was the summer before I started 9th grade. I was a 13-year-old girl dripping in hot dog condiments for initiation into one of the two high school sororities. Molly was a rising senior. She was not partaking in the dousing of us soon-to-be freshmen girls in ketchup, mustard, mayo, and canned chili—Molly was just observing. Figuratively dancing around us in her summertime tanned body and white t-shirt with no bra. I was absolutely in awe of her. I’d never seen someone do this before.

Up until then, I had been operating under the impression that nipples had to be hidden, smoothed out under layers of fabric. They were not an acceptable lady lump. Looking back, I can’t pinpoint a particular person or source for relaying this message to me. I think like many of the rules I internalized, it just came from observing women around me and women in the pages of magazines. Me trying to understand how to exist and be likable in this world. I know it’d sunk into my consciousness by middle school because I remember worrying about Katie, one of the girls on my soccer team who didn’t have a mom, because “who would tell her that she needed a bra to conceal her breasts? Who would tell her that boys (and men) would leer at her if they could see her breasts bouncing around on the soccer field and beyond?”

Then here Molly was, looking absolutely at ease in her body and manner of dress. You could see the fullness of her breasts pressing against the t-shirt and her nipples protruding through the fabric. It was like she was daring you to say something. Daring you to question her audacity. I was initially taken aback by her seemingly brazen display of sexuality, and then considered my reaction. Molly was just wearing a t-shirt, the most basic piece of clothing, something that people of all ages and genders wear, but on her it was sexy because of how her breasts filled it out, and then seductive because she’d chosen not to conceal her nipples. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just projecting what I’d learned to be right, but I didn’t want to believe that a girl or woman must contain herself to make other people feel comfortable. I wanted to be more like Molly.

I realize now that this is a core memory of mine tied to style, confidence, and sexuality. The moment that I decided I’d always challenge myself to dress for me, and question whenever someone made me feel self-conscious about what I was wearing. This is why I like to show off my nipples. It’s a small act of defiance. A little wink at societal expectations.

It would be nice if we lived in world where women didn’t think they needed built-in nipples (or Icy Hot) to feel confident and sexy in their bodies, but until then, I’m all for products that help us normalize embracing our sexuality, nips and all. Maybe the seeing of the “perfect” nipples in everyday life will make us feel like we can embrace our “less-than-perfect” nips.

Thoughts? Feedback? Questions? Leave ‘em below.

Xx,

Robyn