Like Sydney Sweeney, I was sexualised for having boobs at a young age

Browsing the underwear section in Tammy Girl with my Mum, we sifted through the racks of ‘Groovy Chick’ bra designs and soft underwires to try and find a size that might fit my shiny new boobs. There wasn’t one. 

By age eleven, a new pair of boobs had become a regular occurrence for me, my body rampaging through puberty like a teenage girl fighting for a barrier position at a Steps concert. I had outgrown the teen bra size section before I had even begun secondary school, assigned to living in hand-me-down adult bras with metal wires and stiff padding while still getting excited about a game of tag in the playground. My awkward Kevin ‘n’ Perry stage of adolescence had yet to appear, but already my boobs had assigned me an identity by my classmates. I was a ‘slag’…. I was a child. 

In a recent profile for The Sun, Euphoria and White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney shared her experience of how ‘“I had boobs before other girls, and I felt ostracised for it.” The interview has raised an uncomfortable conversation online as hundreds of women shared similar stories of how they were sexualised as children due to them developing breasts early, an experience that I’m all too familiar with. But not everyone online is empathetic towards Sydney’s childhood experience. 

Thanks to the puberty train rolling into my lady station one random weekday in the early '00s, my boobs quickly grew to a DD cup by the time I was eleven years old, with my childhood memories peppered with an air of early sexualisation over my ever-changing body. 

As one of the first girls in my primary school to wear a bra, when I was eight years old, I remember a group of Year 6 boys cornering me and asking me to show them the bra. Innocent and naive to the reason why they were asking me, I lifted up my top to show off my peach bralette adorned in Mr Men cartoons and heard the high pitch shout of a teacher as she quickly approached us. The boys ran away laughing, and the teacher scorned and tutted me for lifting up my top; I could feel the redness covering my face like a tidal wave as the shame washed over me. What did I do wrong? I was eight. 

The fascination and sexualisation from boys in my primary school only worsened as their curious minds and learned sexist attitudes got the better of them, with swimming lessons becoming an awkward nightmare thanks to the boys teasing and laughing about my boobs whenever I had to perform a backstroke. Walking into a swimming pool in my bathing cozzie’ in a body I felt increasingly uncomfortable and detached from, as a room full of pre-pubescent boys gawped and heckled at me like a ‘Walk of Shame’ scene out of Game of Thrones. 

I began to make up lies or forge letters as to why I wouldn’t be taking part in swimming lessons anymore. To this day, I can barely swim, and I feel frustrated for my younger self that this normal childhood experience was taken away from me because my body was objectified when I was still a child. 

There is a general feeling amongst society that growing boobs at a young age makes you the popular one, which is something every girl seemingly wants, right? Well, not exactly. Because being sexually harassed as a kid and being called jailbait by grown men is not the attention young girls are craving – no matter how much misogynistic attitudes will try and convince you otherwise.

In response to Sydney’s remark suggesting she did not enjoy being sexualised as a child, many internet users left angry comments suggesting she had no right to be upset, with one user pointing out, “I'm sure she was quite popular with the boys in her school.” Another shared how “I was a late bloomer, but saw the girls who were huge at 12. They were not ostracised; they basically got attention from everyone.” Some users blamed Sydney Sweeney for the sexualisation of her teenage body, pointing to the images she consensually poses for as an adult woman: “She was ostracised & over-sexualised. Yeah, ok. Look at the pictures she posed for & posts. Maybe she holds some responsibility?” while another suggested she must have been asking for it, “Just like women who wear low cut tops to show off their assets and then complain when people look. Puh-lease.”

It seems many people can’t comprehend the thought that a teenage girl wasn’t exactly ecstatic at being the subject of male sexual fantasies or that being fetishised as a child is not a compliment.

Having your boobs come in at a young age is not the fairy tale that many think it is; I was forced to grow up much faster than I felt ready for because society no longer viewed me as a kid. I was a woman, and women are fair game. My body was commented on and objectified while I was wearing school uniform; I was seen as a target for teenage boys and a figure of adult men’s sexual desires. I was a danger to them, a tease, because they wanted me. All thirteen years of me.

Puberty already feels like you’re taking on the I’m A Celeb’ Cyclone Challenge as a one-person team, but trying to unpack the complex adultification placed upon you as an apparent sexual object who must love the attention of boys and men when in your down time you still want to chill in your fluffy PJs and tuck into a plate of potato smiley’s while watching back to back episodes of Hannah Montana is an impossible path to navigate that can cause deep shame and a disconnection from your own body before you’ve even become familiar with it. 

Our sexualisation begins as children and is so normalised that by reaching adulthood, society chooses to accept the shame around female bodies instead of placing it solely where it belongs –with the perpetrator. 

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