THE POLITICS OF BOOBS

In our woke world, its taboo to talk about taboos, but that’s what I committed myself to do. Unearth origins of traumas in adults which have a foundation in childhood. One research notes that trauma can impact future relationships and lead to issues like depression and low self-esteem. I work with various women navigating their traumas and through the quest for healing, we tackle various hidden abusive practices embedded in cultural misconceptions.

Our patriarchal societies, worldwide have the word CONTROL screaming out loud. It is not shocking to realise that there is a war around women’s boobs since time immemorial in most societies in Zimbabwe. The need to control women’s bodies is closely related to regulating how they function and always keeping a tag on their being. ‘Taming’ how a woman looks leads to ‘taming’ how they perceive themselves and their role in society. While some practices are done with an overt reason to ‘protect’ the results have been seen to be more detrimental than helpful to those whom the protection was meant for.

This paper looks at the culture of breast ironing/flattening in Zimbabwean societies. While input has been drawn from various women, it is also written from a personal experience. In other words, this is personal! Breast ironing refers to a practice of binding or flattening breast of teenage or prepubescent girls in order to delay puberty by making them look less ‘womanly’. The idea behind this was to protect girls from being raped, becoming pregnant or be married before maturity. It was mainly done by a family member and in most cases, about 58% of the time by their mothers. While for some, it’s a better experience of having your chest beaten with a plate or cooking stick, for some it is more hurtful than that. It involves tools like iron, flat rocks, and anything hard and flattening which is really horrid for a young girl whose skin is still as tender as possible too.

“It’s for your own good” I hear them say,” Men are evil, they will give you babies and run away.”

My question to this day is, isn’t society skewed? Who should be flattened or castrated? The person who’s in danger or the perpetrator? A girl endures pain, humiliation, emotional turmoil for being a woman while the one with wandering eyes, long hands and lacks self-control is let to roam around! The issue of control, and victim blaming is still evident in our international communities and even in the bills passed all over the world. Even in the ‘woke’ nations like the USA where abortion laws are seen as the need to control the women’s anatomy. Interestingly according to a report by Africa Health Organisation (2020) around 1,000 9–15 year old girls in the UK are currently thought to be at risk of breast ironing.

Why can’t the woman’s body be left out of the wars and politics of our land? Many adult women are living with traumas of what they experienced many decades ago. Some reported that their chest failed to grow to this day. Some are scared of any type of affection.

“I have tiny breasts to this day. I am so embarrassed that I don’t look woman enough. What if they

had let my boobs grow well?” reported one woman who went through breast flattening using a tight cloth and heated rock. She also reported that it took her time to start dating because she thought no one would really love her because she doesn’t look woman enough. How ironic that she went through breast flattening to not look too womanly and that same reason is what is making her feel inferior and unable to make romantic connections in her adulthood.

Protection? I will leave that to you to decide, dear reader.

MY STORY: THE MICROCOSM OF THE MACROCOSM

As I mentioned before, this topic is personal. I was an early developer, looking like a full woman at just 10 years old. It is not rare these days to see well developed girls even before double figure ages. However, back in the day to be precise in the 90s, girls, at least in my community didn’t grow that fast. In class we wouldn’t fill a hand in numbers. We drew some attention from a lot of people. For me it was from school, church, community, relatives and it wasn’t just the boobs but just everything in the back and front. Need I say, I was a very active and in your face child? I took part in sports, in church activities, I had some ‘entrepreneurial ‘activities and my friends and I played outside, close to the main road with our dresses tucked in our pants and jumping as high as we could during games like ‘raka-raka’, ’maflawu’,’hwishu’ and ‘jump in.’ We were so oblivious to any attention we were drawing from the gawking males around us. It was just time to be babies that’s all! But also there were women watching and hearing some snide and lascivious comments from drunks passing by and well it was enough to cause panic. It wasn’t just the drunks you know. It was teachers in school, it was some mother selling snacks at the gate passing a comment, mmm mwana atopfupfudza uyu (her chest is already full).

I was born of a young mother, so all she knew was that she needed to protect me. I’m not sure if breast flattening was ever in her mind till we had visitors at home. Sometime in 1997, I had just come from bathing running to our girls’ room that I shared with my sister, Connie, some three years younger than me and by then into teenagehood she was your tomboy poster child, way different from me. So here, I am looking for clothes, with my grandmother’s sister and some faceless women I can’t remember who had visited in the room. They looked at me in horror as if they had seen a ghost. “Anna, mwana akasika kuzadza chipfuva uyu. Anobatwa ndokuudza ini. Ndipe mugoti uchine sadza neplate yadaddy vake ndizvigadzire (Anna, your child already has big breasts,she will be raped, hurry bring the sadza cooking stick and a plate designated to her father),” my grandmother’s sister said.

I didn’t understand what was going on, but in no time this woman had me lying on the bed, upper body naked, with her faceless friends tying me down with their strong hands, some on my feet and some on my hands. She was busy beating my boobs with the hot sadzary stick. We didn’t have a plate

designated to my dad, not that traditional home so she was using a random plate. Beat the breasts in, press with the plate, chant ‘go back, go back’ so went the ceremony. I don’t remember what exactly was going through my mind, but I had just finished bathing, why were they smearing my body with this paste and had they forgotten how growing boobs hurt! Why were these crazy women pressing mine down like that, didn’t they know it hurts? I don’t remember uttering a word as I was too confused to understand what was going on. My family was Christian and we had never done any traditional ceremonies like this at all!

I was supposed to have a repeat routine or another session of the flattening ceremony and my mother said No! She must have seen the pain and confusion the first session had given me. I salute her for sparing me the trauma. I’m not saying males’ attention stopped, it didn’t but I wasn’t the problem. My growing boobs weren’t the problem either. It was those who lacked boundaries who were the issue not me. For example, one time on my way to church with other people, a boy came on to me in a flash. He groped one of my boobs and ran away laughing. To him it was a conquest, to me it was horror. He is the one who needed his fingers cut off or his balls smeared with sadza not me. Another time some boys, way older maybe in their late teens were fighting over me at 13 or so .They needed discipline not me. So while the mindset of breast flattening is protecting the girl child from predators, it does more harm because what’s wrong with the world isn’t the person who’s abused but the abuser!

Oh and in my case, the boobs never stopped growing. I’m just a drop in an ocean and now I will introduce to you the various women and their experiences with breast ironing /flattening, discuss the role of women in perpetuating patriarchy, and conclude with current trends in terms of women’s abuse and control of their bodies by those in  power.

SHARED EXPERIENCES

One day in our writing therapy group, I decided to share what I thought was a unique experience of

breast flattening. Boy! It opened a can of worms, tears, laughter, stories spanning many decades ago. We all were united by the shared experiences with level of traumas ranging according to the intensity experienced.

Before I go any further, I want to remind you that according to The United Nations (UN) Breast Ironing affects 3.8 million women around the world and has been identified as one of the five under-reported crimes relating to gender-based violence. The custom uses large stones, a hammer or spatulas that have been heated over scorching coals to compress the breast tissue of girls as young as 9 years old.

Those who derive from richer families may opt to use an elastic belt to press the breasts so as to prevent them from growing. The practice is overarching and is practiced inspite of economic status.