Current Project: Boob Job
The birth of Boob Job transpired my last year of graduate school at CalArts. I fit women for bras in West Hollywood the summer before and spent the majority of my time off trying to write a thesis. I’ve always been deeply interested in women’s studies, knowing that I wanted to write something that was representative of today’s women with real emotional power.
Natalee Woods, author of Boob Job.
Photo by Kelly Dunning, 2009
I remember fitting a woman for lingerie whose sole purpose was getting her husband back after she caught him in bed with his young, vigorous secretary—the same secretary who watched the couple’s children on occasion while they enjoyed a night out. She was flustered and lonely and completely out of her element. But she was determined.
I watched her study her body in the three-way mirror, crying to the point of breathlessness. I drove home that night thinking about her standing in the dressing room, stuffing her wilted breasts into small red-laced cups, hoping to regain her own youth, and more importantly, her lost identity. When I got home, I wrote her story in my journal. And then I wrote about fifteen-year-old Molly and how petrified she was to lose her virginity. I wrote about ninety-year-old Ruth who sat naked while I dressed her in new underwear because she dirtied the ones she was wearing after sneezing. I thought about young Breanne and the indelible cuts etched into her forearms and stomach.
And then, before I knew it, in the midst of my endless recollections, I wrote the foundation to Boob Job.
