ME AND MY BOOBS

Art by Khloe Scalise

"Do I want to wear my boobs today?"

That's the question Noir Goldberg, a nonbinary sophomore at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), asks themselves most mornings while getting dressed. “If the outfit calls for boobs, I have boobs,” they explain, as casually as someone might describe choosing between sneakers and boots.

This might sound strange. Breasts are supposed to be one of the most straightforward markers of femininity—a female-only body part, strictly in the feminine category. But conversations with students reveal something different: people's relationships with their breasts are far more complex than cultural assumptions suggest, and these body parts don't belong exclusively to any single gender or identity.

“As little kids, we don't think about our bodies that much, but as we get older, we do," Phoebe Shay, a junior at Syracuse University, said. Society teaches people to see breasts as markers of womanhood and femininity, but Shay's experience complicates that simple equation.

"Like anyone with body or gender dysmorphia, I've of course had thoughts about concealing my boobs," Shay said. "There are days where I feel like top surgery feels pretty awesome, then sometimes I'm like wait, my boobs are lit. I love being a woman."

Her feelings fluctuate day to day, but what remains constant is her understanding that breasts don't define her gender.

“It would honestly feel very liberating to have no boobs. I'm sure I would feel even more like a woman. Femininity is not about the body, but the person,” Shay said.

Charlie Raibman, a transgender man and sophomore at SU, experienced this disconnect between body and identity from a different angle. To him, breasts represented “the ultimate factor” in how people perceive gender.

“You can cut your hair short, wear different clothing, that stuff is pretty easy, but if you have boobs, people will still likely gender you as a woman,” Raibman said.

Raibman began his transition around age 13. Because he started young, his chest was never very large and wasn't particularly noticeable under clothing. Yet visibility wasn't the issue.

“Even though it wasn't extremely noticeable to people in public, it was still something internally that I was very dysphoric about,” Raibman said. “I was really not interested in having boobs despite people not being able to tell. I didn't want any trace of femininity.”

Raibman's experience reveals something crucial: external pressures don't always determine internal experience. His chest was barely visible, yet just knowing that he had any breasts at all caused dysphoria. The problem wasn't how others perceived him—it was the disconnect between his body and his sense of self.

For Goldberg, their journey with their boobs led somewhere different entirely. Rather than working through dysphoria or making peace with femininity, they achieved something more radical: degendering their breasts altogether.

“I went from viewing them as strictly feminine to just another part of my body, without that gendered connotation,” Goldberg said.

The breakthrough came from a shift in perspective.

"When I started to appreciate my body for what it can do for me instead of how it looks, I was able to change my perspective on my boobs," Goldberg said.

Now, breasts are simply an option to Goldberg— something to emphasize or minimize depending on how they want to present.

"I can be masculine and also have boobs," Goldberg said. It's not a contradiction to resolve, just a fact about their body.

The idea that breasts always equal femininity might seem titillating, but for the people living in these bodies, it's just exhausting. Boobs can mean whatever a person needs them to—or nothing at all.