When “Bridgerton” Season 4 Part One debuted, I joined 40 million other viewers in binging it. Like everyone else, I was ready to reenter the world of outrageous sets, extravagant costumes and passionate romantic confessions. However, as a Chinese American woman, I was most eager to watch Korean actress Yerin Ha take center stage. Finally, someone who looked like me.
As I pushed play to start episode one, I had one specific question. Will I see Ha’s breasts?
In 2012, one late night during nursing school in Portland, four roommates and I got to talking about our breasts. We came up with a list of adjectives: ample, firm, soft, fibrous, pendulous and “pooly,” the last one a foreign word for a small-chested woman like me who barely filled a B cup. My bigger-chested suitemates explained the word described “what happens when they lie on their backs.” I couldn’t relate.
“You’re so lucky,” they said, complaining about the discomfort they endured – the neck and back pain, the difficulties of exercise. One had to wear two sports bras to get enough support.
After their unanimous groan, we moved on to shape. Roommate 2 told us that hers resembled sagging traffic cones. She took out a black marker and drew them on a whiteboard. “I’m not kidding,” she said, which threw us into hysterics.
“Mine don’t look like that,” I said.
Without hesitation, Roommate 3 turned to me. “Can we see them?” she asked boldly.
I paused for a moment, shocked by the question. No one had specifically asked to see my breasts before. With boys, it simply happened. But in an environment where naked bodies were natural — we studied them, took care of them — I didn’t see any harm.
I took my shirt off, unclipped my bra and turned around.
Eight eyes dropped and locked onto my bare chest. My pulse remained surprisingly calm as I stood on display wondering, “What do they think? Do they notice one is slightly bigger than the other?
I received various reactions.
“Well, there they are.”
“They’re…different.”
I knew my breasts differed from theirs. I had discovered it as a child.
One summer vacation morning, I sat on the bathtub edge and watched my mom get ready for work. As she toweled off, rubbed lotion on and carefully slid the beige pantyhose up her legs and over the bulge of her stomach, I stared at her White body. Mom had adopted me from China, which meant our faces didn’t match. It hadn’t occurred to me that other body parts wouldn’t either.
I pointed it out. “They don’t look like mine,” I said, gesturing to her C-cup breasts and her pink nipples and areolas.
As she lifted and tucked her breasts into an underwire bra ― an “over the shoulder boulders holder” as she called it, Mom explained how ethnicity affects breasts ― their shape, size and color. She explained that because I was from China, my breasts had darker nipples and darker areolas. She told me I would probably have small breasts.
I sighed, slightly disappointed because it was another way Mom and I would never match. I knew the odds of me needing to copy Mom’s lift and tuck technique when I was older were low.
The author in Nanchang, China, about to be adopted in 1994.
Photo Courtesy Of LuLu Grant
I didn’t think about my breasts being different from the white majority surrounding me again until that night in nursing school. As I stood there shirtless, my five roommates conferred with each other and concluded they had never seen Asian breasts before.
Besides my own, my younger adopted Chinese sister and a Vietnamese woman who had walked into the hospital delivery room eight centimeters dilated, I hadn’t either. While my middle school and high school had a 13% Asian American population, we ladies gave each other privacy by politely averting our eyes in the locker room.
I wouldn’t see breasts that resembled mine again until I was 26 years old. It happened in a changing room in China. I was wiggling into my exercise clothes for a yoga class when three women my age peeled off their shirts and bras. I shot a quick glance at their chests, and what I saw sparked a small joy.
Their breasts were like mine. Mine were like theirs. Small, round, with quarter-sized brown areolas and brown nipples. I fantasized about letting my breasts hang loose, knowing that the other women wouldn’t stare at my chest. In this environment, I wouldn’t stand out. I belonged.
That late night in nursing school, no one else took their shirt off. They didn’t need to, because everyone was familiar with white women’s breasts. They had not just their white family members, but an abundance of white actresses in Hollywood.
Growing up, there weren’t many leading roles for Asian actresses. I remember Lucy Liu in “Charlie’s Angels,” Zhang Ziyi in “Memoirs of a Geisha” and Michelle Yeoh in “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.” But none of them were naked on screen. I never saw my body reflected in theirs.
While Hollywood overall has made little progress to be more diverse (in 2022, only 2.3% of theatrical movie leads and 6.5% of total roles were played by Asian actors), “Bridgerton” has made a name for itself by celebrating diversity. That includes naked bodies. In Season 2, when Simone Ashley bared her breasts, I wondered how South Asian girls and women felt to see their bodies represented. If they cared, if they felt it was important.
To my delight, “Bridgerton” delivered in Season 4. We do see Ha’s breasts, once in Episode 5 in bed and again in Episode 8 for the much-discussed steamy bathtub scene. During both scenes, sensual and beautiful, I smiled because it was the first time I had seen breasts similar to mine on screen.
I thought about myself in 2012, how I had stood there shirtless, how I had accepted the responsibility to teach my white roommates about Asian breasts. Maybe if “Bridgerton” had existed back then, I wouldn’t have had to.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at [email protected].
