Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] That is my friend Ivy Ricci Ross. She wrote the song and sang it for me. Well, I sort of hummed it, and then she turned it into vocals and guitar. That sounded good. Cause I am. I can sing along.
[00:00:34] I can harmonize, but I cannot. I cannot turn things into musical things, so. And Ivy is a fucking amazing musician. Her music will make you so fucking happy. If you've ever wondered who one of my favorite musicians in the world is, Ivy Ricci Ross is definitely one of my top five.
[00:01:02] Okay, so welcome to Elisa Star's thought of the day, episode 63, unauthorized boob activity.
[00:01:13] As some of you can see, I have. I'm trying to do a video thing where I record video and audio at the same time and then I distribute them.
[00:01:25] It's hard, but I'm trying to do it. And so some of you can see me, and you can see that I'm wearing one of my going out outfits just for you.
[00:01:37] And you can also see that in addition to me sporting my normal four and a half inches of cleavage, I am also wearing a necklace of myself. Yes, it is a plastic necklace that I sell as a keychain. I wear it as a necklace. It's four and a half inches long, the size of my actual boobs, and most of it is boobs. So it's.
[00:02:06] I don't sell them. I don't sell them very frequently because my sales pitch goes like this. I'm like, you get my cards or my stickers or my magnets are $8 each. I did raise my prices a little bit. $8 each or three for $20.
[00:02:31] You do get a free motorboat with a dollar 60 or more purchase.
[00:02:36] If you are afraid to touch my boobs in person, then you can just buy this keychain of my tits and touch them in the safety of your own home.
[00:02:47] Yeah. So that does not, for some reason, insulting people before they buy a picture of you does not always work, but it does get a good laugh. So. So I don't know. I feel good about it. Even though I'm poor, I'm funny.
[00:03:14] So you can buy this on my Etsy store or my snarkycards.net or text me and I can mail one to you. They're $20 each. You'll never lose your keys again. And why would you want to, like, once you possess me, don't you want to touch me all the time?
[00:03:37] It's like. It's. It's a version of me that everyone can enjoy. I don't talk back at all. If I had thought of this. As a child, a lot of my trauma might have been erased, because I think we all know the source of my childhood trauma is that nobody could deal with my mouth, which is why I try to lean into it now, to try to make a living with it now, just to try and like, uh, you know, my inner child wants to tell everyone who ever told me to shut up to fuck off. So that is probably also why you were enjoying. Enjoying episode 63 of the podcast. Okay, so, um, I've been starting my days with this wonderful feminist rage, and it's usually like, just bourbon. Bougie is my favorite, right? And she goes through, am I the asshole? Stories from Reddit of women explaining why they've left men or what they left men? Actually, no, that's it. That is the whole thing. It makes me feel so good.
[00:04:51] It makes me feel so powerful. It does make me feel like, as a spinster, I was right, you were wrong. I was right, you were wrong about everyone who ever told me that I should.
[00:05:07] I don't think that many people actually did tell me that I should find a boyfriend.
[00:05:12] No, it just makes me feel that way about everyone else pairing up and me being alone is. I was right, you were wrong. When I read these stories of women who settled and then had to stop settling because they just couldn't take it anymore. Like, there's this text chain where this dude was like, I told you if you ever did it again, I was gonna leave you. And his girlfriend was like, well, I don't.
[00:05:39] I didn't think that you meant that like that. I literally just thought that you meant, like, you didn't wanna see me do it again. You didn't want me to do it front of you. Um, I didn't realize you meant I couldn't feed the baby at all.
[00:05:57] And he was like, no, that shit's nasty. I already told you. And so, which, which says to me, she's already had one kid by this guy, and he's already thrown this temper tantrum once. She's like, okay, but the. The breast milk is better for the baby. And literally, like, there are a lot of stories of women who've been told by hospital staff that, like, they're starving their child if they give it regular food. That is not breast milk.
[00:06:29] That's not, that's, that's. I mean, women get treated shitty by every single person they interact with at the hospital. Is kind of a side note there, but also, like, there's a lot of pressure for new mothers to use breast milk, and it's true. There are some really great antibodies in it, and it's very helpful.
[00:06:51] But, yeah. He was like, well, I'm not coming to pick you up. She's like, yeah, you scared the nurses and the doctors, so you're not actually allowed back in the hospital. They have, like, a watch out for you with security. So I know you're not picking me up. Does this mean you don't want to see your child?
[00:07:14] He's like, not if you're going to breastfeed, no. And he couldn't even say breastfeed. He said, not if you're going to do that again.
[00:07:23] She was like, okay, all right. Understood. Like, and it's interesting to me because I've read a lot of stories of women who did, and I've had done some really uncomfortable things to please men, really stupid things to please men.
[00:07:45] But it seems to me that there's this natural moment where a mother's like, you want me to starve my kid?
[00:07:56] Oh. And then it just, like, that helps women get to their, like, to their boner switch and just turn it off.
[00:08:08] Um, and honestly, I spent 30 years in therapy, and at least 20 of it were devoted to me finding my boner switches and, like, redirecting them. So I no longer find men who treat me as shitty as my father attractive. So I'm no longer comfortable being treated badly. So I look for people who think that I'm worthwhile. Like, that took 20 years of therapy for me to just, like, get to where all the switches were and turn them off and then redirect my boner so that when somebody likes me, it's attractive, and when somebody doesn't like me, I forget all about them.
[00:08:57] I did it. I totally did it.
[00:09:01] I switched all my boners. So I'm attracted to people who like me and who are kind to me now. But it was interesting to me that that correlation for mothers just was just easy.
[00:09:17] Whereas you'll see a woman not be able to reprogram herself like she'll want to, but she can't figure out how. And she keeps ending up with the same kind of asshole over and over again, hoping it's different.
[00:09:31] And, yeah, it just struck me that that's such a. It's. Is it biology? Is that why women are just like, ugh. I did see this really cool TikTok where this woman was like, okay, as women, we are biologically programmed to not find the people we nurture attractive.
[00:10:06] Like, oh, yeah. That's why as soon as I start to take care of someone, as soon as I start to have to explain to them how to do life, my boner goes down. And that's why a lot of women get into these marriages and then realize they're married to man babies. And then their boners go down.
[00:10:36] Sorry, I shouldn't do that. That's not. Their boners go down. That's not really how lady boners work. I know, but it's an. It's a handy visual. So men are leaving women for breastfeeding children. They get grossed out and horrified and embarrassed when we do things that are not about sexually pleasing them.
[00:11:03] But even when we do things that are sexually pleasing or as sexually pleasing as we can get, I guess they're still not happy. You can't please all the men all the time, and they want to tell you.
[00:11:22] So I started naming some of these phenomenons so that I could just understand the processes a little bit better in my head. And I think it's going to help you out a lot.
[00:11:34] I always dress like this. I've been dressing like this since I started buying my own clothes. Even maybe a little bit before I started buying my own clothes when I was like, 15 or 16, I would always try to dress like this.
[00:11:46] I've been wearing lingerie for as long as I could as clothes.
[00:11:51] My boobs have been spilling out since I got them. It's made men feel feelings this whole time. And, you know, the thing is, is that this is how I like to present in the world. I think that every single person, when you get to know them, you understand that they feel good when clothes touch or don't touch them in certain places. And we all just have different, I think, like, sort of clothing biology like that, where, like, I. I had a best friend for a while who always had, like, rubber bands around their neck and just like, thick ass, like hundreds. And I wore handkerchiefs, just always something around the neck. Right.
[00:12:38] I had another friend who. You never saw their boobs, but their midriff was always out, you know, and you can picture all of your friends, and some of them are comfortable in a lot of different kinds of clothing, but everybody kind of has a favorite when they're at home, how they feel, like when they're. When they're not paying any attention, like, what they want to be in all the time. And this is it. My boobs, I want out.
[00:13:07] I do not want anything around my neck, ever. Nothing closer than this is as chokey as I get.
[00:13:16] I'll wear a scarf, but I have to be able to get it off quickly because I overheat if my boobs are covered up.
[00:13:27] Sometimes I wear shorts. Sometimes I wear a dress on the bottom, but boobs out, you know? But curtain. Usually I have a butt curtain on, usually to cover up, because.
[00:13:43] And this is more like. This is. I just. This is where my superpowers come from. My boobs. I have always felt like, since I was nine, since I got these boobs, I have wanted to just, like, this saying has just, like, risen up from within me, and it goes, look at my boobs. Do what I say.
[00:14:02] I try not to yell unless I'm drunk. And I don't care if somebody actually looks at my boobs and does what I say because it doesn't work when you narrate it. Like, pretty much all of life doesn't work when you narrate it, which is a bummer for me, because I love to narrate. It's, like, my main job. So.
[00:14:24] Yeah, that. That's never authorized. That's never. That's never welcomed that particular boob activity, just so you know.
[00:14:32] But I always feel good when this part's out, and it doesn't matter. Even if I didn't dress like this, even if I dressed from. From here down, even if I had tiny boobs, Mendez will tell you, you're not boobing. Right. I call it unauthorized boob activity. When you're cited for unauthorized boob activity, whether a man is telling me he's surprised I'm giving him a boner, which has happened a lot, or he's telling me that I need to lose weight, which has also happened a lot. Men run up to women and give them boner reports all the time. Unsolicited boner reports. Sometimes they scold or cajole or insult, but it all means I do or do not have a boner for you for the following reasons. I mean, that could be why they get so butthurt after they cat call you and you keep, like, walking and, like, going to work or whatever. They gave you their heart.
[00:15:36] They gave you their boner report.
[00:15:40] That's it. That's.
[00:15:43] And it's also. It reminds me of when white people police people of color.
[00:15:50] Like, as a person of color, you don't ask the nearest white person whether it's okay for you to be jogging or breathing or feeling feelings next to them. You. But because you didn't ask and you do those things anyway, like a. Like a regular fucking person, you might get confronted by a nearby white person who feels like you're doing unauthorized POC activity.
[00:16:18] Men regulate women's behavior in a similar way. Similar way. Like, unauthorized boob activity is basically the exact same shit.
[00:16:29] White ladies do get upset when people don't ask our opinion before they do shit we do. We like to interject ourselves. We like to think that we are the arbiter of all the good ideas.
[00:16:42] All white people expect to be asked before other people live their lives. And it's the same way that men, I think, expect to be asked before women, like, use or display their boobs, our boobs, or just have them sometimes.
[00:17:02] I mean, like, having been in this body my whole life, I've heard stories from young, like, younger, older, flatter, fatter women who get the same.
[00:17:15] The same boner reports I do.
[00:17:20] And they're.
[00:17:22] When a guy is not getting a boner for you, he's really critical. He really wants to talk to you about your unauthorized boob activity because he's pretty sure that's the reason why he's not getting the boner.
[00:17:35] And I want you to think about all of the times the guy's, like, leaned out of his car and gone, fat, ugly bitch. Those were just that guy going, you're not giving me a boner right now.
[00:17:50] Boners are very binary. A man either has one or he doesn't, and he can't wait to tell you about it. So I don't know how to stop getting those reports. I can't. I can't tell you. But I I can tell you that if. When you think about it that way, it does help when you think about a man coming up to you and telling you that you're fat, or when he comes up to you and tells you that you're so beautiful he wants to tie you up and choke you. We either one, just be like, I'm just gonna file this away under another unsolicited bunner report. Thank you, sir. I do not need this.
[00:18:29] Yeah, there's no real way to get authorization for any of your actual boob activity. Just like there's no real way for people of color to get authorization from all of the white people for exit like, to exist.
[00:18:47] There's no special code you get given. There's no design you can put on your boobs that approves of them by enough Menta that the other men will just leave you the fuck alone.
[00:19:02] And one of Tignitaro's early specials, she was talking about, like, just walking past a guy, and he yelled little bitty titties after she, like, got past him. And she was like, you could have just said hello or nothing at all.
[00:19:21] But that's what he chose.
[00:19:24] And little bitty titties is. Is unauthorized boob activity. Citation is what I would like. That's how I would record that. Now, if you don't know who Tig Natoro is, she's. I'm gonna put her picture right here. Right here. She's right here. If you're watching the video of me, she's fucking hilarious.
[00:19:44] And she dresses opposite to me, and she looks opposite to me. She wears very basic colors. She's dressed, like, from. From head to toe.
[00:19:58] Clothes do not protect you from getting boner reports. Tiny boobs do not protect you from getting boner reports. Nobody can protect you from boner reports.
[00:20:07] And additionally, all boob activity is unauthorized, which was a little bit of a comfort to me when I thought about telling you my boob stories, because I've done some cool shit with my boobs, but, like, I've never, like, lined up all the stories before. And when I did, I was like, oh, shit, I am a weird whore who fucks with her tits all the time.
[00:20:31] Okay? So when I was nine, I was homesick, and my mom opened the front door and tossed something at me. I was crouched on the floor sneaking in some tv time, watching Perry Mason sell the case.
[00:20:44] I picked up the thing, and it was a white, lacy bra because it was 1988, and all bras had bows and lace on them. In 1988, even training bras, which is what it was, it was white because all training bras were white or beige. Any other color was a slutty bra. And again, I was nine, so she was not going to buy me a slutty bra at nine. I don't think she ever bought me a slutty bra. I'm not even sure if she brought me, bought me a black bra, because black was definitely a slutty bra color.
[00:21:19] Anyway, at nine, I was astounded. I had just found out that I was going to get my period, and I was, like, super stoked about that. So stoked, in fact, that I told everyone that year that periods exist and I was gonna get one, which is when my uncle Das and I became enemies.
[00:21:37] He didn't want his ten year old daughter hanging out with a girl who said the word period. An unbeknownst to nine year old me. I was no longer allowed to play with my cousin Deanna because of it. No one explicitly told me that any of this shit, any of this girl shit, Washington secret or something, that I had to go through silently and even if they had. Good luck with that. As I've said before, this is not a silence situation. I cannot. I am incapable. This is my library voice, you guys.
[00:22:09] So we talked about it whenever periods came up. I talked about them all the time, which was a lot.
[00:22:17] But the thing is, I think that I was the one who was making sure they gave up a lot. If you're familiar with my work, you know, I've never really stopped talking about my period.
[00:22:27] Um, yet another instance of my mouth getting me into trouble. Literally, you couldn't say the word period on tv or in the office in those days. Um, it was, like, sort of something you would worry about getting fired for if. If you left a period stain on something.
[00:22:45] I would have been obsessed with boobs before I got them, but I think I got them before I thought about them.
[00:22:55] I mean, when she gave me the bra, I'm sure it's because she saw my boobs, like, wiggling under my shirts, and she wanted me to, like, cover up. She didn't say that. She just said I needed it. And my mom had an a cup. Her whole has an a cup her whole fucking life. So she told me as a child that I needed to wear a bra at all times, even in my sleep. And that big, like, big boobs always needed underwear, or they'd underwire or they'd sag.
[00:23:24] So I wore bras at night until I was 25.
[00:23:31] I didn't give up the painful underwear until I turned 42. And then they stabbed all these skin tags into my armpits.
[00:23:42] Yeah, sort of gross. It's something I try to explain to small boobed people. They don't really get it. I'm like, no, you don't understand. Like, you're saying that you would like to have my boobs for a day, and I'm explaining to you that my boobs come with stabbing.
[00:24:01] And I'm not even sure that the underwire did anything to keep my 46 double D from gravity's desperate embrace.
[00:24:09] I think they were just, like, another lady thing that hurt my body until I gave it up. And third and fourth grade, and up until my early twenties, my tips were, like, what I now think of as small.
[00:24:22] A cup in elementary school, b cup in middle school, and c cup in high school. D's in my early twenties, and I'm still a d. But, like, the deal is with sizes. I don't know if you know this, but the size of your rib cage also expands the size of your cup.
[00:24:43] They assume that fat ladies have big, big boobs.
[00:24:50] In America, if you want to get a small band and a big cup, you have to go to Europe.
[00:25:02] I've heard rumors about those bras. They're.
[00:25:06] I think they're more like big bra. Like to get add bra. In the eighties and nineties, it cost maybe $50, and you had to order it from a catalog. It only came in beige. They did not look good.
[00:25:23] My best friend Midge had double D's in middle school, and those tits came with bullying. Boys were always asking her their size, snapping her bra strap, begging to see them, asking her nipple size. Side note, why are men obsessed with nipples?
[00:25:40] I've had no less than 100 men ask me about my nipples in my adult life. Not always. I'm not always. You're right. I am kind of always wearing this ship. But this is the deal. I'm giving you four and a half inches of fucking cleavage right here.
[00:25:54] You want me to describe my nipples to you now? Okay, so you're right. I was wearing something slutty. But these guys didn't even wait to get to know anything about me. They just started asking nipple questions right away.
[00:26:13] And, like, if I liked any of them, I would have shown them.
[00:26:18] It's just so greedy to try and map out the whole fucking boop.
[00:26:23] So, in school, boobs weren't really just, like. Like, my problem, because I grew up in a christian cult, so most of my clothes were conservative, you know, until I could buy my own clothes, like I said. But my personality combined with my boobs were the problem. Like, in high school, I started a game of boob tag that went on for, like, two years. Our church youth group. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was at church youth group. I didn't do it in high school. I didn't do it in the actual school, just at church.
[00:26:58] Our youth group was 80% Jennifer's. So, like, literally, it was, like, me and a dozen jennifers, like, running around the church, panting and giggling and covering our boobs with one hand and sticking the other one out, trying to grab a gen tit with it. And then the three boys that were there just watched us in the back, hands in their pockets, terrified.
[00:27:26] Our youth group pastor Brian had no idea.
[00:27:30] When he finally found out what we were doing, he decided that it might be a lawsuit. So he wasn't allowed to say the word boop. So he had to say, stop playing that game.
[00:27:43] You could tell we'd stopped when the giggles died down and we all caught our breath.
[00:27:48] I mean, I. They're kind of hilarious. They're like handles. Boobs are funny, but boob tag is my favorite game. I don't know where I learned it, except the only thing I can think of is something that I might have played at home with my mom and my sister. I don't remember it, but boob tag, you're it. And then you reach out and you sort of like lightly slap a boob.
[00:28:15] Just sounds like it just, it comes, it comes off the tip of my head really easy.
[00:28:23] I got in trouble at church a lot. I got in trouble for dancing to the church band. And then as a 13 to 15 year old, three different adult women took me out for lunch to tell me that I was hugging their husband boyfriend, love interest too hard. They were upset because their grown ass men were getting hard ons for me and they wanted me to change my behavior.
[00:28:47] Talking to the grown man never occurred to them. In fact, it was understood that this is something that, like christian women do for their men, is protect those men from their natural urges, from the slutty teenage girls.
[00:29:03] That's just part of loving the Lord, you know? And they never told me not to talk to those men about those conversations. But I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and avoid those dudes in the future because. Not because I was afraid of grown men getting hard ons for me. Um, as far as my, as far as I was concerned, growing up in the church, it was. And, and as a woman as well, growing up in the eighties and nineties, even now, it's my job to be pretty. That's something that I just grew up thinking. Um, it doesn't help that my mom is who my mom is. Sherry told me.
[00:29:42] Sherry bought me and my little sister, I think I was eleven when she started buying us makeup. And she told us that we had to put a face on before we left the house.
[00:29:53] So I always had a full face of makeup since I was eleven years old.
[00:30:00] So, yeah, I did think it was my job to be pretty. So giving those adult men hard ons didn't seem like I was doing anything wrong to me. It just seemed like I'd gotten caught by the wrong ladies and I'd have to be a little subtler in the future.
[00:30:21] Being a whore, being my natural whore self, or just being pretty, which was my job.
[00:30:29] And this.
[00:30:33] Usually they would tell me something about themselves because that's the other thing, is that people, like, part of the reason I started snarky cards is that people will just, since I was little, like, will just tell me things about themselves. And, you know, I've heard. It's because I am really universally accepting because I just don't give a fuck what your deal is. I just want you to be honest and I'm interested.
[00:31:00] So they would tell me things about themselves in order to bond, and then I would spread all that shit all over church because fuck that shit. They called me a fucking whore.
[00:31:17] And also I'm a teenager and they're adult men are of creeping on me. Not my problem.
[00:31:24] So I always get vengeance with my mouth. That's just the deal.
[00:31:31] I grew up going to church three times a week. By the time I was old enough to get a job, I realized that working was a reasonable excuse for not going to church. And so by then the game of boob tag was over. The Jennifers and I didn't have much to comment.
[00:31:46] They wanted to make the lord happy. I wanted to be a lip slut, drink booze and write slam poetry.
[00:31:52] Obviously that's not something.
[00:31:55] Yeah, I think it's just like the slam poetry maybe is the only thing I don't really do anymore.
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[00:35:07] It feels really good to have a group of people who believe in me and want to hear more of my ideas. So again, if you need more brain power or caffeine that doesn't cause inflammation, go to magicmind.com slash thought of the day and use the code thought of the day to get that 20% off. T h o u g h t o f t h e d a y so by the time I was in my early twenties, I realized that I love my boobs more than anything in the world. My butt is like a nineties big screen television. It's enormous shelf. Like, it's got a weird dent in the side, and it's a white girl shame. It took me like. Like, I like big butts, and I cannot lie. It came out when I was 13, and by then, I was already ashamed of my giant ass. And that didn't start a wave of people loving big butts. People didn't actually cern mix. A lot was weird for that. I mean, a lot of people thought it was weird for that. Basically, I didn't realize people liked my ass until I was in my twenties. So I still use the butt curtain like. Like a woman raised in the nineties.
[00:36:27] And I calm my ass. The mountain only the brave will climb.
[00:36:33] But people with a little bit of. Little bit of bravery, little bit can dive into my tits, no problem.
[00:36:40] As soon as I got them, I told you, I found myself, like, shaking them in the mirror and being like, do what I say.
[00:36:54] I've had strangers rush up to me in the street and try to stuff my boobs back into my shirts or customers scold me for shaking my tits when I'm selling my cards. You're not selling your tits. They'd lecture me or cover up.
[00:37:11] Cover up. You're gonna get raped.
[00:37:15] Oh, wait, sorry. That. That doesn't remind me of something.
[00:37:20] That's something that my mom used to say when we were little girls. It started when we were six. Bye, honey. Have a good time. Don't get raped. Literally. Something my sister and my mother and I would say to each other every time we left the house. From sex on just. Just a. I guess I forgot.
[00:37:45] Okay? Yeah.
[00:37:48] Yeah, I guess I forgot about that when I was 43. Something else weird that happened. My perfect symmetrical boobs were catastrophically changed. The right one, Chester. That's right. They're boys. Chester and Charlie grew, like, half a size bigger than the left. That's why it's always trying to, like, escape in photographs. And all. All of my t shirts are topsy turvy.
[00:38:19] My cleavage is like a hook. Now it looks. Used to look like the COVID of a fucking victorian novel. It was just like a straight and down.
[00:38:30] Apparently either one of your boobs can just randomly grow at any age for no fucking reason at all.
[00:38:39] You never know what you have until you lose it.
[00:38:43] Weirdly, I don't look 45. People in the bars are always surprised when I say how old I am. I've never been like the beautiful girl.
[00:38:55] I think I'm pretty. I think I'm funnier than I am pretty. I think I'm.
[00:39:01] Yeah.
[00:39:03] My lasting youth, though, has made me a babe in my forties. And my grandmother and I looked exactly alike. She looked 45 until she died at 73. So I think it's because I spent a lot of my life unconscious. Because when I'm bipolar, my mania means that I'm up for four days. And my depressive mode literally just means that I sleep for four days. They're not equal. It used to be like three weeks of up and then one week of down, I think.
[00:39:40] And then sometimes I would rapid cycle and that would freak me out. It all kind of freaked me out. It was a really big surprise.
[00:39:46] Like, being bipolar when I. Before I was medicated, before I knew it was happening, was terrifying because it was like I was always racing myself to finish things before I would crash for no reason, is like, basically how I thought of my life.
[00:40:04] And there were also, like, connections I couldn't make because.
[00:40:10] I don't know why, but it just seemed like projects, connections, like everything I'd get things 90% done, and then that last 10% would just elude me. And I really do think that the bipolar medication has helped a lot in helping me see how to finish that 10% and helping it not be even a little bit of a thing.
[00:40:33] It's lost me jobs, relationships, probably classes I don't remember now. But it's also, I think, some of the reason why I look young. I could. I mean, genetics plus, like, years of extra sleep and, ah, fucked.
