Some people think large breasts are a nice problem to have. Nora Ephron was one of them. At the close of “A Few Words About Breasts,” her Esquire essay from 1972 in which she confesses that “breasts were the hang-up of my life” and that had she had them, she “would have been a completely different person,” she writes:

“My girl friends, the ones with nice big breasts, would go on endlessly about how their lives had been far more miserable than mine. Their bra straps were snapped in class. They couldn’t sleep on their stomachs. They were stared at whenever the word ‘mountain’ cropped up in geography… It was much worse for them, they tell me… I don’t know how lucky I was, they say.

I have thought about their remarks, tried to put myself in their place, considered their point of view. I think they are full of shit.”

Large breasts aren’t a fun burden to carry. For years, my breasts have been spoken to (but as yet, they haven’t talked back). Not only that, they’re sometimes touched without my permission—not by men but usually by smaller-chested women curious to know “what if feels like” to have big breasts. One of my girlfriends can hardly have dinner with me without peeking at my breasts between sentences, or announcing “Chloe! Your boobs!” to the restaurant. Then there was that charming guy at a bar who thought it would be a swell idea, on first meeting me, to pellet popcorn at my cleavage. And when a friend heard I was writing this story, she told me, because I have “great tits,” it’s “unfair” for me to write about them. Why can everybody talk about—and hell, to—my breasts, but me?