Take Off Your Bra!

"Take off your shirt and take off your bra.”

“Everything? Do you have a gown?”

“No, take off everything and wait for the doctor.”

I nodded my head, but shook it in unbelief.

The woman left the room.

I stood there, alone and stunned.

With trembling fingers, I nervously began to unbutton my dark purple and black checkered flannel shirt. It made me feel warm and cozy on this cool fall day.

My mind swirled.

“If I go fast, I’ll get it over with sooner!”

“If I go slowly, I can postpone the agony and humiliation.”

“If I don’t do it at all, I can quickly run out the door and forget I ever needed an echocardiogram.”

None of those were good options.

I’d been having heart palpitations for the past year. Having my heart examined was the next step.

I needed to take off my bra.

I breathed deeply and chatted with myself to control my rapid-firing nerves.

“You can do this. Your best friend has been battling breast cancer. How many times did she have to take off her bra and show her breasts to a stranger?”

“Why do you have to be so modest? All those years living in Morocco, you never once went to the hammam with your friends. You were too chicken to get butt naked with all those ladies.”

“The doctor sees hundreds of patients, women, and breasts everyday. He doesn’t care.”

The conversations were enough to distract me while I finished unbuttoning my blouse and unclasping my bra. I grabbed my flannel shirt to hide and protect my bare breasts.

The woman entered the room again.

“Lay down.”

I reluctantly released my shirt from my tight grip, placed it on the empty chair, and obeyed. She gently placed my arms and body in certain positions, opening me up even wider and exposing my breasts even more.

“Don’t move. The doctor will be in soon.”

Vulnerable, exposed, scared, cold, anxious . . .

I was naked, alone in that room . . . that freezing cold room.

As I waited, feeling the cool, crisp hospital air blow across my upper body, I remembered.

Twenty-four years ago, newly pregnant with my second son, I went to the doctor for my first obstetric exam. We had recently moved from the United States back to France, my husband’s home country.

“Take off your clothes and lay down on the table.”

“What? All my clothes?”

“Yes, all your clothes.”

“Even my bra?”

“Everything.”

“Do you have a gown?”

“No.”

I already had a one-year-old baby. It wasn’t that long ago that I had been pregnant, experienced regular doctors’ exams, given birth to a child in a hospital, and learned to breastfeed.

This wasn’t unfamiliar territory for me, even though it was the first time I was navigating it in a foreign country.

I felt paralyzed.

I reluctantly made my way behind the curtain and removed my pants and underwear. As much as I tried to convince myself that I could do this, I was incapable of removing my long tunic and bra.

“Marci, you have a choice,” I mumbled under my breath.

Yes, I had a choice.

I stepped out from behind the curtain, timidly, yet boldly, and turned towards the doctor.

“I’m sorry. I cannot do this. I will not walk out in front of you naked. I’m keeping on my bra and my shirt.”

He nodded and proceeded with the exam.

Yes, I had a choice.

As I continued to lay on the exam table, waiting for the cardiologist to come in to perform my echocardiogram, I thought of my friends in the safe house where I work in Spain.

They didn’t have a choice.

Everyday, on the street, underneath their short, skimpy minidresses, they wore bras they didn’t choose.

When they were deceptively dropped off at the brothel, not knowing what they were walking into, my friends were handed lingerie.

If selected by a man like a raw piece of meat, those women had no choice . . . no choice but to take off their bra, no choice but to expose their breasts.

When men lined up at the door, one after another, those nights on the dirty mattress on the kitchen floor, those women had no choice . . . no choice but to take off their bra, no choice but to expose their breasts.

Vulnerable, exposed, scared, cold, anxious . . . just like me.

The difference was . . . I needed to take off my bra. They didn’t. The difference was . . . I had a choice. They didn’t.