VH1
If you’ve watched the latest season of Basketball Wives, then I’m sure you’ve seen new cast member Ogum “OG” Chijindu. She is a friend of Jackie Christie and a football player in the Legends Football League for women. She’s also dating a basketball player named Kwame Alexander, hence her placement on the program.
She has a lot in common with the other cast members. She doesn’t take disrespect, she’s quick-witted with the comebacks and drama tends to follow her. But she has a very different body than the other ladies.
As a professional athlete, she’s very strong. She prides herself on having a natural figure, and she’s not afraid to show it off. At her birthday party in episode three, she met most of the ladies in a much talked about pair of thong bottoms and a twisted bandeau-meets-halter bikini top. On the most recent episode, she wore a very low-cut and hip-hugging dress to an ill-fated meetup with Evelyn Lozada and Malaysia Pargo that wasn’t warmly received. And while I’m not going to comment on her choice of wigs, weaves, geles, crowns or whatever she chooses to put on her head, as well as her clothing choices or her makeup, which have all been criticized enough, I have to say that it’s been a bit disappointing to see the women on the show talk, behind her back of course, about her body. Particularly about her breasts.
While the other things mentioned can be controlled, for many women, the perkiness of one’s boobs can not be.
Despite the fact that OG’s breasts may not be sitting up on her neck, she appears confident enough in her body to show them off in whatever ways she sees fit, whether it’s through a side-boob-baring shirt or a low-cut number.
But I’ve heard women on the show make a number of remarks about her breasts that have been very negative. In just the last few episodes I’ve heard that she has “weird-a– titties,” “her titties, they look crazy,” “She had one titty up here and one titty down there,” and “When one titty is going this way and the other one is going this way, you gotta start over.”
The more and more it was said on national TV, the more it encouraged everyday people to post mean things about her breasts on social media as well (my example has been taken down — thank goodness).
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj5-KHTHOQy/?tagged=saggyboobsmatter
And while people can say all of it is harmless, it doesn’t send a good message when it comes to embracing our own bodies. Especially since many of us can’t afford to enjoy the enhancements that women on the show have been open about having.
There is a really disappointing belief that if you don’t have bouncy, high breasts, you need to strap them down and cover them up to keep other people from seeing them. They need to be in someone’s push-up bra until further notice, far away from ensembles that would require one to go braless or swimsuits that don’t have cups. But that’s unrealistic and pretty mean.
While many of us think that the aspects of our body that are not anywhere near perfect or “acceptable” should remain hidden, there are some who are just fine with what they have and don’t mind putting it out there. And while OG may not need me or anybody else to say how petty shots at her physical form are (she plays football, so the girl can defend herself verbally and physically), there are people who watch these shows and hear the comments made and internalize the harsh beliefs that other people have about bodies like theirs.
That’s why it’s important that there are movements going on right now like #SaggyBoobsMatter, spearheaded by London-based blogger Chidera Eggerue, to help women show love to their breasts and to provide a challenge to the expectations of the female form. She, like many women at a young age, considered getting a breast augmentation to lift her chest.
“For a teenage girl to be thinking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ it was way too early in my life for me to start disliking myself,” she said on the talk show This Morning. “So I realized I definitely wasn’t the only person who felt how I felt. And I thought, it’s time for me to open up this conversation and get everyone involved. Because it doesn’t matter your body shape or size, any woman can have saggy boobs at any age.”
“I’m reclaiming ownership of every single negative connotation attached to what it means to have ‘saggy boobs,’ Eggerue added. “I think ‘saggy’ is an adjective, and we are the ones who determine if it’s negative or positive.”
And a number of women online are deciding to change their mindset and look at saggy breasts as positive and normal. It’s quite refreshing:
While we have the right to critique someone like OG for the things she says and does on reality TV (she can be a tad aggressive), I find it a bit low to try and clown her about her actual physical appearance, especially when it comes to something that’s quite typical. As your own breasts begin to descend, you may decide to upgrade your brassieres and keep them perched as long as possible. But if she, or any other woman, chooses not to, it would be smart to keep our comments to ourselves about that decision. As a wise woman told me standing outside of a Target last night, “Everybody’s got their something,” including every big, small, skinny and curvy woman trying to make us think they’ve got it together on reality TV. Let OG — and her titties — live.
