Having Bad Gyal and Nora Ephron's breasts

PalmBeyond being part of my particular Holy Trinity, there was no other common denominator that –at first glance– made me relate Bad Gyal with Nora Ephron, until the reading ofMixed salad (La Otra Editorial, 2025) –the series of essays that the writer wrote in the 70s on women and feminism– and the viewing of The Jewel, Alba Farelo's documentary about her latest album. Breasts, I suddenly thought. This turns out to be what these two geniuses have in common. Small, non-hegemonic breasts, which have contributed to their enormous sense of irony, and which represent the umpteenth reason to reflect on them. It's not that either of them tries to pretend this topic doesn't matter to them. On the contrary: both turn breasts and their size into such a transcendent issue that they end up emptying them of meaning. This is where the subversion I aspire to in life lies.

From the moment you have—or don't have, when you're supposed to have—breasts become a tool to define you as a woman within society. The pace at which this small part of your body decides to develop ends up determining your relationship with your physique, the way you dress, and even how you relate to other people. And all because there's always someone to let you know if you've done too much or if you're running late. I happened to be one of the latter.Swimmer: nothing fears in front, nothing fears behind. "Ha ha" was the cleverest joke that a friend's boyfriend came up with one day after school. No one picked up on him. There were no bad faces. Just laughter. And voilà: New insecurity unlocked.

In the transition to adulthood, things change, but not much. Each one arrives burdened with their own disappointment: one is bigger than the other, they've sagging, my nipples are like Maria cookies... It doesn't matter what size or shape they are. You look at your friend and I and, coincidentally, one of you would always like something the other has. It's always too much or too little. So, when you approach your thirties, you start to feel cheated and you discover that humor is a good alternative.0 tits, many goals" was the caption with which Bad Gyal did so much more for us in 2023 than any therapy session. In this Instagram post, she accepts that breasts are something to be measured and then fucks off the whole thing. She could just ignore it, but that wouldn't make her so iconic. The Jewel Something similar happens when the singer is having a fitting and tells her stylist, "I'm afraid of looking too flat." "That's what's beautiful about you. We like that you don't have chins," the stylist replies with a laugh, just before confessing that she, on the other hand, wants to get a double chin. "If you lift your chin, I'll get double chins," Alba Farelo jokes back. Because of things like this, I think maybe Bad Gyal and Nora Ephron would have been good friends.

In the article Some observations about breasts, Ephron deftly proves that her mother was right when she told her, "Someday this will be funny and you'll write about it." "I would sit in the bathtub and look at my breasts and know that any day, any minute, they would start growing like everyone else's. But they didn't," she recalls of her teenage years, when she was convinced that "nothing but the breasts" would make her "a girl, a definite, undeniable girl." Sometimes, when I feel ridiculous and remorseful about my oversharing with some stranger after the third beer because I'd run out of things to talk about, I think that's how Ephron made a name for herself, and then everything seems less serious. bust-building device."

- "I slept on my back for four years."

- "I threw cold water on them every night because a French actress said to Life that that was what she did to get her perfect bust."

Thank you, dear Nora. It's a comfort to know that I wasn't the only one who made blessings like:

- Believing in urban legends that said if you ate a lot of almonds or chicken, you would grow a bikini with more push up of the entire store (which later absorbed half the pool's worth of water).

- Discreetly clasping my elbows together when no one was looking, trying to make myself look bigger.

The writer closes her article by saying, "If I had had them, I would have been a completely different person. I sincerely believe that." Bad Gyal wouldn't have been the same either. And maybe I wouldn't either. So lucky.u